I want to point out that the argument has never been “greedy laborers” in the pejorative sense. The argument has been that laborers need to rationally account for future inflation, which itself contributes to inflation.

The reason that corporate profits aren’t often mentioned is simply that people had expected competition to naturally curtail profits, since in a competitive market, manufacturers should happily lower prices (a bit) to capture more market share and thus more profits. The fact that doesn’t seem to be happening is why this cycle is interesting and why we are now talking about it.