The Henry Ford school of thought. Instead of trying to produce the best product possible at the lowest price, hobble yourself by overpaying your employees. Ford rapidly became number 2. I have to wonder whether its stupid pay policies made it the benchmark for the UAW’s shakedown artists, thereby ensuring that all of Detroit became a life support system for the UAW instead of businesses run for profit. I suspect Detroit’s fall from grace - in large part caused by insane UAW pay and benefits packages as well as featherbedding work rules - was postponed for decades because of the complete destruction wreaked upon its foreign competitors and their domestic markets by WWII.
I suspect the same. The '50s and '60s are said by some to have been booming because of unions that created the middle class. I believe that the boom could only humor the union excess because all of our competitors had been bombed to rubble in the '40s. Once Europe and Japan rebuilt the unions made us uncompetitive. And we have slowly lost the "arsenal of democracy".