People like to point to the post WW II period of prosperity as a triumph of stong unions. The reality is that heavy industries could give union workers whatever they wanted because they had no competition. The US Army Air Foce and the Royal Air Force had bombed all of the heavy industry in continental Europe and East Asia flat by 1945, and the Germans had bombed UK and Soviet industry. The Japanese were reduced to making ashtrays and the Germans were making nutcrackers. Heavy industry collapsed in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s because they rebuilt, and their workers were still making peanuts.

How one group can live extremely well without everyone else suffering seems to be an issue.