"We can't afford to treat our staff humanely because it's not in our business plan" may not be the argument it appears to be.

If treating employees with respect makes the business unviable, the business was never viable.

Yes, businesses that cannot treat employees (and customers for that matter) shouldn't exist, so if that were the case, good riddance.

That is part of the less pretty side of how unions perform their capitalistic functions. Killing companies that threaten established worker rights, so as to not get races to the bottom. For another example they should also cull companies or even industries that have become so unproductive that they can no longer compete on compensation.

> Accounting for selection effects and the potential endogeneity of unionisation, the results show that increasing union density at the firm level leads to a substantial increase in both productivity and wages.

https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/130/631/1898/5824627

> After controlling for differences between studies, a negative association between unions and produc- tivity is established for the United Kingdom, whereas a positive association is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing.

https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/1755676...