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Sure, they can give up a vast majority of a union's powers and survive without government backing. Let's compare what a theoretical non-government-backed collection of employees could do relative to a union (under my local laws).
On inception, a collection of employees that got buy-in from 51% of the employees would consist of 51% of the employees. A union would consist of 100%. (Technically you have the ability to refuse membership, but you are forced to pay membership dues regardless.)
If the company doesn't like working with the employees (for whatever reason), it can fire them. If it doesn't like working with a union, it's stuck. Similarly, it can hire replacement workers if they stop showing up for work (It can also do that against unions now, but couldn't before 2008).
If the company shuts down its location, the employees get laid off. If the company shuts down a unionized location, then the union hold power over the vacant building and must be reinstated when someone else buys it.
Some type of unions being able to exist without government backing isn't much of an argument that the currently existing ones could. Heck, I'm not sure if your "bunch of employees [that] agree to bargain together" even deserves to be called a union.
This feels like a reflection of Against Murderism.
My examples are central to the category (obviously, because they're mine) like UAW and CUPE, while yours are weird fringe groups that barely deserve to be in the same category. It's like arguing that taxation is theft, therefore theft is pro-social.
I just read up on Dutch labor law, and one part stuck out at me:
That's about as far as possible from "a bunch of employees can agree to bargain together". At least in North America you can shut down your entire business and build a new one from the ground up (on different ground, of course) to escape your union. Dutch labor law is firmly in the realm of "If you don't like it, build your own government" rather than true free association.
Given that baseline level of coercion, of course the entities-which-the-Dutch-call-Unions look completely different than North American Unions: All of their most important functions have been outsourced to other entities, not removed as I had thought.
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While I understand your point, in some sense taxation is the central example of theft.
How many people get robbed each year? How many get taxed?
How much money gets stolen? How much gets taxed?
Any examination of other forms of theft are basically looking at weird hobbyist fringe-thieves.
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