There is an interesting exchange in Bourdains "Parts Unknown" [1] that he did in Montana where he's talking to a former labor leader and politician from Butte where he says "the company is a son of a bitch, but they were our son of a bitch" (very much worth watching the entire show, but in particular the Butte segment). I grew up in a union family and that held true of the union as well. Something changed in my lifetime (I'm 40 years old) and I really do think it was NAFTA and free trade in general, but also it was the US reaching a terminal state of resource extraction, or at least the level of resource extraction we were willing to tolerate. The two of these weakened unions and worker solidarity and slowed the profit momentum that we had become accustom to and gave carte blanche to corporations to seek local profits in remote places. I think this fundamentally changed the dynamic of being a worker across all industries and, as you allude to, the focus on organizational optimization (coupled with quarterly earnings focused business culture) only heightened the alienation of workers and now the chicken is coming home to roost for the entire American project. Aside from deindustrialization and optimization, I think much of this can be laid at the foot of the stock market and our collective fixation on it as a barometer for societal success.