In the liberal fantasy Bowser describes, a union would be wasteful because the company is perfectly competing but the union makes a monopoly, creating a deadweight loss.

In real life, the company is already nearly a monopoly to its employees, so adding another monopoly to negotiate with decreases the deadweight loss.

Most people don’t want to switch jobs as frequently as we need to now. They want to just pick something they actually enjoy and do that for years.