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Notes -
The situation is symmetric though. The union's doing this exactly because it has the negotiating power to extract profits for its members! They already make double what the average menial laborer makes and want to double it again.
Also, the margins aren't increasingly thin. Stock prices (discounted future profits) keep going up, and stuff keeps getting cheaper. The things that aren't getting cheaper are often an illusion (healthcare is more expensive mostly because we're using more of it, education's getting more expensive because ... people want more of it, and price isn't tied to anything). Housing's bad, but you can't win everything.
The healthcare industry is so addicted to insane price opacity aided by gov't subsidy of demand (and restriction of supply) that people are using significantly more, at higher prices, than they would otherwise.
On top of subsidizing demand (causing the people wanting more of it) and restricting supply, the price actually is tied to something - the gov't swoops in and helps universities price discriminate and try to tie the price as close as they possibly can to your personal willingness to pay. It's the outliers like Harvard where they hardly even bother with prices for most customers. They can focus almost entirely on the few 'whales' who will 'donate' tens of millions of dollars with no explicit promise (only a wink) that their daughter or granddaughter will be admitted and then hold distributional power over the rest to give out as is politically useful or maximally self-serving.
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