Sears/Kmart had a plan a few years ago to begin making shoes in a plant near Chicago. They held negotiations with local officials to get some incentives in place and their analysis was that even with low paid labor and the incentives it was still more costly than making them in China. However, they were willing to do it as they felt they could capitalize on the American made label and they really wanted to do this. As plans continued to evolve, a union was introduced to the project and suddenly the incentives were tied to a requirement that the factory had to employ union labor. After plugging in some new labor cost numbers to their spreadsheet, the cost to operate became to high. They walked away from the project. Sure low paying jobs were lost but so were many of the better paid positions such as designers, supervisors, managers and all the construction folks and equipment suppliers that would have built and outfitted the plant.