See: Dodge vs Ford
The Dodge brothers were major investors in Ford Motor Company, and thus entitled to a large share of dividends. Henry Ford tried to bankrupt the Dodge Motor Company by avoiding to pay FoMoCo dividends and thus starve his competitor of cash. The fact that the mechanism Ford used to make his own company unprofitable (and thus avoid paying dividends) also benefited the workers is just coincidence.
In fact the reason we have the modern precedent "companies must operate for the benefit of shareholders" is precisely because Henry Ford's defense in Dodge v. Ford was "I can do this because I want to and I am king". If he had argued "paying workers more makes them happier and thus makes Ford more profitable in the long term", Ford probably would have won that lawsuit. He didn't make that argument because it just wasn't on his radar: His goal was screwing Dodge.
It's a bit more nuanced than that. The court held that company directors have to be acting for the benefit of shareholders. They still have wide latitude about how to do that.
The reason Ford lost is because his legal position was essentially "I am king, therefore I can do whatever I want". But you can't do whatever you want. You can't lock the workers in the factory and burn it down with them inside, for example. You need to have some kind of colorable argument that what you are doing is somehow in the interest of shareholders (either long or short term).
The problem for Ford was that he couldn't articulate any reason for how his actions were beneficial to shareholders (probably because the real reason, killing the Dodge Brothers Company, would have been illegal under the antitrust laws of the time).
So the easy solution is just to pay a lot and threaten to fire (and possibly blacklist) anyone who no-shows. Since the pay is much higher than they can get elsewhere, the people are much more likely to show up.
The high pay probably also helped find people who would tolerate the extremely intrusive practices of Ford's "morality police" (my term), who would inspect worker's homes to ensure they were living "the right way".
Done. I doubt Henry Ford had trouble coming up with a fig leaf explanation if that’s all that was truly needed.