Union Pensions insolvency does not undercut or validate Unions any more than people's underfunded IRA/401ks undercut or validate non-Union employment.
Both--and the sorry state of State Employee plans-- are all three tied to the fact that the US is not a nation of savers, have made overly-rosy assumptions about investment returns and healthcare costs, and have all over-relied on Social Security and Medicare as backstops.
The decline in unions (and shift to a service economy) has coincided with stagnation in worker wages, and workers getting a declining share of the wealth they create (instead execs and shareholders took more).
The rank-and-file worker needs *something* (some collective power or action) to assert a claim for making higher pay as their productivity rises. That probably can and should be either unions, or Sen Warren's Codetermination plan, or a New New Deal around things like minimum wage, paid family leave, and greater access to job training.
if not trade schools or university, somebody needs to help workers invest in their own productivity, rather than employers just saying "BA Required" but not paying wages that actually pay back the cost of a BA.
