It was not really about the machinery, or the quality of the work. It was about the rights of the common person, their livelihood, and their very lives. The reason the Luddites are viewed disparagingly is purely because they lost, and history always favours the victors.

You have to remember that this all took place in a time where workers like you and I had no real rights of our own. There was no universal suffrage, only those with capital had a say in matters of government. So when machines were brought in to your workplace, and the powers that be proclaimed that a large bunch of us would be redundant, we despaired. This was the way we scraped by, it’s how we fed ourselves and our families.

So what did they end up doing? They protested. They sabotaged the machines to buy us more time, in some cases they smashed them, in other cases they removed and hid some parts; each day a machine wasn’t operational was another day that they got paid their wages, another day they’d survive.

Malcolm I. Thomis argued in his 1970 history The Luddites that machine-breaking was one of the very few tactics that workers could use to increase pressure on employers, undermine lower-paid competing workers, and create solidarity among workers. “These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made.” ~src

The Luddites specifically targeted the machines, because their goal wasn’t to hurt people, but rather to have their voices heard. This was really the only avenue they had any power to make a difference.

The powers that be obviously weren’t happy about this, they’d spent money on expensive machinery, and now the common rabble was sabotaging and destroying their property. So they drafted laws, like the destruction of stocking frames etc. act of 1812 which classed meddling with the machinery, or the produced goods a felony punishable by death. You can read the act here.

May it therefore please Your Majesty that it may be enacted; […] That if any Person or Persons shall, by Day or by Night, enter by Force into any House, Shop or Place, with an Intent to cut or destroy any Framework knitted Pieces […] or with an Intent to break or destroy any Frame, Machine, Engine, Tool, Instrument or Utensil, used in and for the working and making of any such Framework knitted Pieces […] every Offender being thereof lawfully convicted shall be adjudged guilty of Felony, and shall suffer Death, as in cases of Felony without Benefit of Clergy.

And people were killed for this. From an archived page on Bolton Council’s website.

Job Fletcher aged 34, James Smith aged 31, Thomas Kerfoot aged 26 and Abraham Charison aged 16, were sentenced to death and hanged at Lancaster. Their fate was shared by three men and a woman who had been charged with “riotous assembly” in Manchester and with damage to property and stealing food (mostly potatoes).

This is ultimately what ended the Luddite movement. The unfeeling machinery of capitalism churned ever onward, the ruling class sent out the military to quell the riots, and eventually when enough workers (including children) had died for the cause without making any marked difference, they gave up the fight.

The Luddites were absolutely right in terms of rights of the individual workers, and that’s a lesson we still haven’t learned today. It’s not unreasonable for an industry to undergo large operative shifts, but the people affected negatively by this should still be cared for. It’s not reasonable to throw a person to the wayside and watch them die just because a machine replaced them.