That was after the arms race that Kennedy started to starve the USSR out of GDP succeeded, when the USSR was allocating all its GDP to defense instead of consumer industries. Which immediately stifled the extremely impactful consumer industry that the USSR had from 1950s to late 1960s. In that period, Kennedy admn. was quite concerned about the progress of the USSR, circulating internal memos saying how the USSR was able to raise the life standards of its people from desperation to 2nd world standards within the same generation, and at that rate other countries could start copying their development model. Ie, socialism. If this was not countered, the global economic control of the US that it gained in post-Ww2 environment would fell down like dominoes as nation after nation chose socialism and allied with the USSR. This was later called 'the Domino theory'. To prevent it, it was decided to 'make examples of' the countries that tried such 'independent development' (that's what they call socialism in their internal memos). That's where the Vietnam War originated from. Also all the other things including the blockade on Cuba etc.
What relevance this has to the topic at hand is that, if the employees feel that they are actually receiving something out of the work they do and their lives are getting bettered in ANY way, they work. If there is no improvement regardless of how much they work, they just dont care anymore. That's the current situation in the US - any wage raise is immediately sucked out by the privatized critical services ranging from healthcare to food, from rent to education. Its just not worth putting in more effort anymore because the more effort you put into making money, the more the market sucks out of your wallet.