By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor, CNSNews.com

(CNSNews.com) – A former Clinton-era Cabinet member is taking part in a union-backed media offensive that is pushing for increased unionization by having Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

It’s an argument, however, that some economists say comes straight out of the failed policies of the past – the 1930s Depression era, to be exact.

Robert Reich, Clinton’s secretary of labor, told reporters Wednesday that the way to get the economy back on track is to boost the purchasing power of the middle class. One major way to do that, he said, is to “expand the percentage of working Americans in unions.”

“Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States,” the former Harvard-turned-Berkeley public policy professor said.

“With median wages rising slowly or actually dropping, consumers simply don’t have enough money to buy all the goods and services that the economy provides,” Reich said.

“If they can’t borrow any more and have to rely on their sinking wages, the entire economy is in trouble, because there’s just simply not enough demand out there,” he added.

But if workers did have unions, Reich theorized, they would have a wage and benefit premium.

“If they did have higher wages and benefits, they would have purchasing power they need to buy more of the goods and services that this economy produces. That would strengthen the economy overall,” he said.

Reich is working hand-in-hand with a coalition of labor unions and the Center for American Progress Action Fund to call for increased unionization as a means of “saving the economy.”

As part of that, Reich endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the “Card Check” bill, which would allow union organizers to get employees of a company to create a union simply by signing union cards — in lieu of workplace secret-ballot elections.

Barbara Comstock of the Workforce Fairness Institute, meanwhile, isn’t buying Reich’s analysis.

“By his logic, Michigan — the most unionized state in the country — would be the most prosperous state in the country and the auto industry would be the economic model that the rest of the country should follow,” Comstock told CNSNews.com.

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