The United Auto Workers’ failure to organize the employees at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., has been greeted with predictable hosannas from the sworn enemies of American unions. Survey their celebratory columns, though, and you won’t find the slightest consideration of most Americans’ primary economic problem: How do workers get a raise in today’s economy? With the rate of unionization so low that even unionized employees have trouble winning good contracts, how can workers profit from the gains in their productivity? What will it take for workers to regain the power to reap what they sow?




In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
