Yes, they do. The board member croneyism keeping the working man down is a bit of a simple minded reddit fantasy - in the real world, public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They don’t serve the interests of some hidden cabal.

If you notice that companies make similar decisions as a result of changing market trends (a global pandemic, for instance) it’s probably because those decisions were deemed the most financially sound. They weren’t colluding to screw over employees.