Why? Because they can get away with it. And that is because we no longer have strong, nationwide union presences (either in the US or Canada) holding them acc

Why? Because they can get away with it. And that is because we no longer have strong, nationwide union presences (either in the US or Canada) holding them accountable. Unionize your workplace, and get a bare minimum of annual cost-of-living increases included in the contract, plus some sort of performance-based increase. Those sorts of clauses are, from what I've heard, still standard in many union contracts.