Would you at least agree that when they kill the market they're selling to (by starving them of the means to buy) that they aren't the most astute businesspeople in the whole world? That part is so obvious it should go without saying, but the thing is, so few ACT on it. Ford did, and he wasn't exactly a friend to labor or in any way progressive, but he did recognize the need to keep the labor base in enough doh re mi to continue being a consumer base.
"Starving them of the means to buy..." Ummm, the worker agreed to that salary, did he not?
Look at Flint, Michigan, for an example of what happens when workers demand pay and benefits greater than what the market can sustain.
If we look at Flint, Michigan and the role unions played in the demise of GM, we should also examine government's tax bias in favor of debt financing and also CEO pursuits:
"Every time a new CEO arrived in Detroit, Flint or Grand Rapids, jobs were slashed, tens of thousands put on the streets in the name of a more efficient operation.
"
The mindless pursuit of the bottom line has inflicted a heavy human toll on the people of Michigan."
Return of the Native
Worker demands didn't include a tax bias for debt rather than equity investment. Workers and their unions haven't called for loading down the US economy with debt through corporate raiding with junk bonds.
"This subsidy for debt leveraging also is the governments largest giveaway to the banks, while causing the debt deflation that is locking the economy into depression violating every precept of the classical drive for 'free markets' in the 19th-century.
"(A 'free market' meant freedom from extractive rentier income, leading toward what Keynes gently called 'euthanasia of the rentier.'
Along with worker demands we have to look at rentier (FIRE sector) entitlements today and which side commands the politicians' attention more.
Michael Hudson