It seems that Western society is divided over the question as to whether or not employers have some broader duty of care to their employees beyond the economic arrangement of employment.

If the CEO of a factory had to sell half their maintenance-hungry machines to balance the budget, do they owe it to the sold or retained machines to take a pay cut so they "share in the harm of the layoffs"?

The factory machine example is silly because they are machines and offensive because many people would agree that employees are very much not machines.