That unions work with businesses to ensure harmony and productivity is the idea behind the CPC-run "unions" in China (I'm a mandatory member, yeh). I believe that unions should be somewhat antagonistic to keep the labor market a bit dynamic (so progress can be made); too much harmony is a big warning sign in many societies.

Speaking of such, Japan was big into factory robotics up until the mid-90s, when they took a break to take advantage of China coming online and the cheap labor that came with that. Its crazy how China set robotics back by about 10 or so years. With Chinese labor becoming more expensive, I'm sure we'll see more progress; not to mention domestic bots, in-the-field bots, and drones.

However, this is a good question: how to deal with surplus labor that gets displaced by robots? We might want to move more slowly for the sake of social stability, that 50% savings meant some guy might be out of a job. I'm not a Luddite, but we should definitely think carefully about the best way to proceed.