If you aren't selling enough product, you have to slow the factory down. But factories often don't slow down efficiently, it can be better to just work 4-day weeks for a while.

It's not really managements fault that we have a boom-bust economy.

And... I think most people prefer a little collective belt tightening and to the risk of losing their livelihood.

Which is another failure of management, and still causing the workers to be punished.

Managers are not oracles, they can't always anticipate boom and bust cycles on the market, nor - if they can - does it always make sense to scale production capacity down and back up if the cycles are short.