Because supposedly, the new tooling (in this case, AI) allows them to produce the same or greater output despite doing less work. Workers are under the perennial illusion that they'll ever benefit from productivity gains, but that hasn't been the case since the 1970s.
Agreed, except that workers have never benefited from productivity gains, those always accrue to the employer.
The wage growth before the 1970s was mostly from the postwar boom, before jobs started to be moved out of the country. After that there was downward pressure on wages.
People can argue that the workers benefit from buying cheaper stuff, but that's on the other side of the equation.
Nowadays there are plenty of people, so wages haven't risen to keep up.
It may have been good (for the US), but that definitely doesn’t make it normal, and unfortunately I don’t see how such a situation occurs again without similar circumstances. I’d love to be wrong, though.
The same things were enjoyed by workers in most of Western Europe and even Japan post-war.
The current population decline crisis will likely shift the pendulum towards labor in 50 years or so.
My understanding of the argument is that it doesn't deny that unions and strikes weren't instrumental but that it was only economically sustainable because of the increased productivity.