I don't think it's right to blame it on unions. They exist for a reason. Workers were exploited ruthlessly, Are they guilty of excesses and sometimes corruption? Sure. But I wouldn't want to see it go back to the time when ownership had absolute power.

I am pretty sure that Bill was being sarcastic. However, to your point: unions once had a place but today they have outlived their usefulness and have become parasitic. These days we have so many government regulations that we could never go back to the days of 10 year olds working in coal mines or any of the other abuses that gave rise to the unions in the first place. Aside from that, in 2014 the private-sector union participation rate was only 6.6%. But public-sector workers had a union membership rate of 35.7 %, more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers. The biggest problem is with the public-sector unions.