It's a tightrope because when it becomes cheaper to automate whatever job they were doing manually, then they make $0 per hour.
That's the case in South Africa with farm workers and their unions driving up the minimum wage. There is 25% unemployment nationally and they are clamoring for more money. The farmers just go "well at this price point, I might as well just buy some more machines and get rid of these people".
How is inflation is SA currently? Inflation tends to hypertrophyze unions, because there comes a need to a common agreement to adjust wages across the board to keep up with prices.
It varies, but for the past 2 years it's been around 6%. So yes increases are necessitated, but the unions generally start off with ridiculous demands like 15% increases and benefits and they have no problem with striking for days on end.
The problem really is that when you have 25% unemployment, where those 25% are almost all unskilled then you work to eat and not much more. You don't have much bargaining power there. So again, if you're unskilled, oversupplied and are replaceable by machines, you should be very careful about what sort of demands you throw around. I'm not sure if unions are really conscious of this fact or just trying to appease the workers demands.
That's the case in South Africa with farm workers and their unions driving up the minimum wage. There is 25% unemployment nationally and they are clamoring for more money. The farmers just go "well at this price point, I might as well just buy some more machines and get rid of these people".
Machines have no unions.