The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

I would say the issue for the labor movement in the United States is not structural... there is no correlation between the success of workers and how the labor movement is structured.

Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy.

I would say that workers in general, and white workers particularly, are correct that their economic wellbeing is deteriorating.

I was too much of a victim of the model I created. I tried Change to Win and helping Obama, and then I just ran out of Andy Stern ideas.

Unions have been the best anti-poverty program that actually worked and did not cost the government a dime. But as unions grow smaller- not stronger- our ability to act as an economic mechanism to distribute the gains of our work and raise all workers' wages and benefits up is disappearing.

Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed.