Granted, I only know Horror-Stories about US-Unions, but it seems that the Europeans are much ... saner.
With some hyperbole, I once read this story about how for a simple job someone had to get three different unionized workers, because each one only can do certain work.
At our company we are currently building an automated machine to do quality control on a manufacturing line - we had to deliberately design it in a way that doesn't actually reduce the number of people needed for the job.
In i.e. Germany this doesn't seem to be so weird. Here, the unions are way more involved in running the company, it's way more about partnership, doing good for the company, then in making sure to keep privileges.
Obviously it's also not perfect, there are other problems for sure.
They're saner by the fact that their media speech laws only extend so far. The US, you can call yourself unbiased news, lie on-air, and then if confronted on it just declare it free speech. There, inventing or grossly embellishing stories will get you sued and fined.
In my limited semi-personal experience, (some) European countries have stronger labor laws but a much less adversarial model of union & management collaboration, which can include creative ways of reducing costs (so long as the benefit of same is distributed equitably).
