You are allowing your emotions and dislike of Musk to cloud your judgement.
You say they are entitled - high skill, difficult to replace workers are actually entitled to make demands of their employer which are proportional to the value they offer, in particular when they act collectively.
The U.S. CFR Title 14, Part 1, Section 1.1 defines "pilot in command" as:
...the person who:
Has final authority and responsibility for the operation and safety of the flight
Edit: Mind that there is an obvious conflict between positions like, "you do as I say, because my money", and the complex relations that constitute a corporate business.
That's not how it works with Crew Resource Management.
The point is that employer-employee relationships are inherently imbalanced. A corporation has far more freedom to make choices like that than their employees.
No, you can't just "get another job" if all the companies are abusing employees in the same way.
The fact that corporations are set as mini-dictatorships never made sense to me. Everyone's at the mercy of the whims of the CEO.
Karl Marx said that workers should own the means of production, and this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. In capitalism, shareholders have more power over the company than those doing the day-to-day work who know the business, and those shareholders could easily tell Musk to tone it down if they wanted to – and Musk would listen.
The employees could never sway him. "Take it or leave it," which really just means "go work for the other asshole."
I think it wouldn't be such a bad thing if corporations had mandatory employee democracy on certain workplace issues. I think the ownership class has too much power over the individual. Just because you own assets shouldn't mean you get to play games with people's livelihoods.
There is a reason planes still have two pilots -- and it is not that the need two or even one to function most of the time.
PIC does not order anyone around, but is the actor/writer. The other pilot verifies and overrides/calls issues. And certain operations, for instance during take off, are done together.
Maybe companies work that way, but if you fly a plane with that approach, I am joining as the second, crew or passenger.
