dealing from the rich

In an anti-union editorial in the Weekend Australian, the following sentence struck me as weird:

"...to target companies such as Woodside, BHP and Qantas essentially for having the temerity to offer employees better deals than they could get under union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements..."

If it is possible for employees to get better deals, why aren't they being offered them even when unions are at the negotiating table? Could it be because the deals aren't genuinely better? To qualify as "better deals", you'd think employees would be receiving more income. So if big companies are paying less when unions are negotiating, you'd think they'd be thanking unions. Sorry, but I smell a rat.