No, you didn't mention unions, but my response is specifically to: > company's goal is to "extract" from each employee more value than his/her/their salary. I

No, you didn't mention unions, but my response is specifically to: > company's goal is to "extract" from each employee more value than his/her/their salary. If a company manages to save on a salary because the employee doesn't have much negotiating power, good for the company. If that's a companies goal, then an employee's goal should be to counter that, and Unions are a line of defense against companies treating an employee as a resource to "extract" from. Free markets are good and all, but companies leveraging their outsized power against individual people shouldn't be surprised nor able to prevent individuals from working to put that power in check.