First, I will recount three stories, with which I am intimately familiar. Malleable Industries was a manufacturing company in my home town, which went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the late 1960s. I knew some of the 900 men who worked there. Through a series of strikes, the men were making wages usually attained only by professionals, such as doctors or lawyers, in spite of lacking not only an education, but many were barely literate—and I do not mean that to disparage them as human beings. Unfortunately, paying these wages had caused the company to lose millions of dollars several years in a row and they were bankrupt. The reason I mention this case is, what happened in court. A federal judge issued a plan to keep the company alive. He told the union if they would accept a 20% pay cut—back to the wages they earned less than ten years prior—he would vanquish the creditors and give the company a fresh start. Otherwise, he would liquidate the company's assets and close it forever. It came down to vote of the rank-and-file union members. Their leaders told them to reject the judge, because a union should never give up what they called hard fought gains. The workers voted 895-5 to close their own factory, putting them all out of work; and a factory capitalized with millions of dollars in land, buildings and equipment became extinct.
In a fascinating sidebar, Malleable Industries sued the union, seeking to recover damages resulting from three strikes conducted by the labor unions in violation of a collective bargaining agreement containing a no-strike clause. The jury returned a verdict in the amount of $115,000 against the Local Union and $1,210,000 against the International Union—one of the few verdicts in the history of the United States in favor of a corporation against a union.