Prior to the end of WW II, almost NO businesses/companies/corporations gave their employees free health insurance. You got sick, YOU took care of it! After WW II, the unions forced some companies to include free health insurance to their employees and the cost and coverage has now escalated to gigantic proportions. So has the cost of being ill or injured.
Add to that, the salaries and pensions which the unions squeezed out of companies and early retirements, at full or almost full pay, including health care and that is what has REALLY brought Ford to the brink.
The great and glorious American steel industry was brought down, way back in the early '60s, by outrageous demands, a sitting president ( JFK ) who has less than no idea how to govern, let alone handle the strikes, and now, we have posters here, ranting about foreign steel.
wow- and I just got here today.... LOL!
(here meaning the whole economics thing....)
Actually the reality is that American steel companies brought in Japanese, Swiss and German engineers to view the new steel making process called continuous casting.
The went back to their home countries and built new mills while the corporatists at U.S. Steel thought they would always reign on high in the world of steel.
They did not build new mills but thought that the existing mills would be able to keep up production.
You really only know the capitalist party line and don't look much further, do you?