You're so busy defending Rob's trivial sound bite that you've missed something, before "that point" of sound bite extraction, actually substantial in the way of union abuses: Clause 2b. That's the contract clause that Bethlehem management agreed to that decoupled employment from the need for workers by stipulating that if a job once required three people to complete, it would forever require three people. Regardless of any productivity gain brought about by technology.

It's certainly legitimate to object to the way that management casually discards workers in favor of machines if there are even a few pennies extra profit to be made. But Clause 2b and its equivalents in other union contracts was a bludgeon instead of a scalpel and was ripe for abuse.

The thing is, I'm guessing you'll shy away from exploring the implications of Clause 2b, because management is absolutely culpable for having agreed to it. The history of Bethlehem Steel is one of a gluttonous and slothful management sure that the party would go on forever...and it would have, as long as the foreign competitors could be kept out of the domestic market and Bethlehem and the rest could raise prices at will to cover bad decisions like Clause 2b...and so many more. But we know how the story really turned out, don't we? (If you really read the whole article, you'd know it explicitly made this point many times.)

Not quite the ideological fairy tale about the meritorious capitalists whose brilliance, hard work, and above all, Christian moral fortitude an sets inspirational example for us all, is it?