[GuiA]

How is this "the other side of the coin"? This story makes it sound like the union did its job (= protecting the interests of individual workers over the interests of the company) exactly as intended, and technological progress went on forward unimpeded, as we can attest to today.

Sure, some executives would have rather not paid for the retirement of the longshoremen. Without unions, they would have fired all of the longshoremen in one fell swoop, and made a few millions more in the short term (for the exact same results in the long term). But what happens to the longshoremen in that universe? Do they tend to commit suicide more than the average? Develop an opioid addiction? etc.

I don't think a fair society is one where it is acceptable to fuck over an entire subsegment of the population for the profit of "investors", "the market", "technological progress", or whatever you want to call it.