As far as The Big Three and “the union [building] the middle class of this country.” You’re %100 right, the downside of that is noted in the above NYTimes article:

The Big Three and the U.A.W. had the bad luck of helping to create the middle class in a country where individual companies — as opposed to all of society — must shoulder much of the burden of paying for retirement.

That’s a lot of eggs in one basket…

It runs contrary to the free market idealism espoused by the Foghorn Leghorn contingent of the GOP that the union should accept less than what the market can provide. I do think, however, the unions deserve their bad rap in part. My old roommate, for example, was a union worker on the line at Ford. In the three years he lived with me, he worked maybe two months. He was on disability for the remainder. See, his dad was a union rep, and got his son off on disability for – ready – high-blood pressure. And he made more than $65,000 a year. That kind of corruption runs rampant among the rank-and-file. THAT is what they need to fix, as that is, in my mind, one of the foremost reasons that the unions are everyone’s whipping boy.

Now, I only raise that as an example of a problem with the union. I sure as hell don’t agree with the Shelby-ization of American jobs.