The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Before the mills were unionized, workers were treated horribly. Seven 12-hour days were common. No days off, ever. And an injured worker was simply fired.
Fast-forward many decades. I worked for almost five years in a union steel mill. It was as you noted. The rules and quotas were so lax that it was unusual to see anyone put in a full eight hours. The mill met its quote for the shift, then everything shut down.
The workers went and hid. The plant supervisors got in their cars and went home.
Meanwhile, foreign plants were modernizing. I worked in a rolling mill. One huge piece of rolling equipment had the Kaiser’s crown stamped on it. While foreign plants were modernizing, we were using machinery bought before WW 1! That’s when I knew we were done.
Oh no, you didn’t make quota and shut down your worked very slow and made sure it took the full shift to make quota. If you hit quota quickly your “friend” would beat the crap out of you for it.
I was basically in the labor gang, but was assigned to the rolling mill for about three months.
I pulled a 6" x 6" x 10 foot piece of 1500 degree steel from the furnace using tongs hanging from an overhead rail, ran it over to the first set of roller and had to drop it so that the mill grabbed it and that started the rolling process.
If you missed the first set of 6 inch rollers, the guys working on the mill had to retrieve it and shove it in and they were not happy {I missed more than once and the crew pulled me off of the tongs, which was OK with me}.
I never liked the idea of sticking parts of my body close to a 1500 degree furnace but the other end of the rolling line was no picnic because by the time that the steel got to the end of the rollers {depending on the order} it was still over 1000 degrees but it was 30-60 feet long and as vicious as a hot snake if it touched your body.
The only thing worse that the rolling mill was the hammer shop {the noise of a nine ton hammer banging on a piece of hot steel was unbearable}.
When I graduated from college, the thought of working in a steel mill was the last thing on my mind {but my Dad was a member of the USW for over four decades}.
Unions were necessary at the start of the industrial revolution, but like every other power structure, the leaders got the benefits, the workers got the crumbs {but took advantage of the rules, and just like the story, killed the golden goose}.