That shift already exists plenty, as one can see from the high degree of automation of those warehouses. The only thing that Unions would change there is that they can bargain e.g. for re-training of the workers made redundant.

Unions have not only fought for retraining, but for compensation for workers whose jobs were outsourced or automated away. Compensation is important in order for workers to transition careers without their families ending up homeless.

They've been encouraging that forever, but it's just not there yet. They weren't going to wait until it was less convenient than people, they're going to do that the moment that it's viable, but as of yet, it still needs work.

Relatively fewer but higher quality jobs isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially in an industry where growth can absorb the efficiencies, rather than needing to resort to layoffs.

Great! It’s only because of our stupid system that removing the need for thousands of humans to spend their lives doing unnecessary labor is a bad thing.

>It’s only because of our stupid system that removing the need for thousands of humans to spend their lives doing unnecessary labor is a bad thing.

That stupid system will still be there after all of those jobs are automated away.

That sounds like a good thing. An Amazon warehouse job is grueling, terrible work. The more we can get machines to do the crappy jobs, the better.