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Notes -
If it's all hobbesian struggle between competing interests, why even have firms and contract law? Ofc, it's for general benefit - firms and contracts and the economy benefit all participants.
And we can ask the same question of unions - does the overall-best economic system have a large role for unions, or does it not? Even if the 'overall' hides a redistribution of surplus from one party to another, the govt can just redistribute it back.
And that leads into a proposed alternative to government protections for unions: a strong government-imposed social safety net. This prevents any local deadweight losses from unions, allowing the best firms to win, and then uses a uniform tax to efficiently redistribute that efficiently produced surplus to the workers. Or with less academic obfuscation: In your situation, with various political struggles the dockworkers' union prevents the port from automating, increasing dockworker pay but slowing cross-ocean trade of goods, making everyone slightly worse off. In my situation, the dockworkers are fired and the port is automated, and increased taxes takes part of the overall consumer surplus and sends it back to the dockworkers.
(note: I'm not saying this is a good policy, whether you want this much redistribution is separate, just that it's probably better than unions)
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