No offense, but that attitude of yours is exactly what got these "American manufacturers" into trouble in the first place. The whole industry collapsed because of the incestuous relationship between management, labor and government. Management provided the exorbitant compensation packages to labor, government provided management with inflated government contracts and protection from foreign competition, and the labor unions provided the political support to keep those government leaders in office.
Eventually the whole house of cards just collapses, and the industry turns into Greece.
You aren’t looking far enough back. How did unions amass so much power? It was during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that multiple acts were passed giving unions legalized monopoly power: Railway Labor Act, Davis-Bacon, Norris-LaGuardia, the National Industry Recovery Act, National Labor Relations Act (aka Wagner act), creation of the National Labor Relations Board, Walsh-Healy act. Unions seriously abused these grants of monopoly power and companies were by and large helpless against this onslaught of federal labor laws.