Isn't this also how companies perceive job cuts and wage reduction? Forget about Henry Ford's idea of having a population that can actually afford to buy your products, just keep cutting labor costs.

Edit: Or stock buybacks. Just as long as "the line goes up" for now doesn't matter if you run the whole ship into the ground in the future.

This is actually a good point, and is detrimental for similar reasons: concentration of power, reduction of competition and increased fragility of the whole system ("too big to fail").

The impact of organized labor has been analysed a lot - have a look at the literature, it isn't trivial.