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Sure, they can give up a vast majority of a union's powers and survive without government backing. Let's compare what a theoretical non-government-backed collection of employees could do relative to a union (under my local laws).
On inception, a collection of employees that got buy-in from 51% of the employees would consist of 51% of the employees. A union would consist of 100%. (Technically you have the ability to refuse membership, but you are forced to pay membership dues regardless.)
If the company doesn't like working with the employees (for whatever reason), it can fire them. If it doesn't like working with a union, it's stuck. Similarly, it can hire replacement workers if they stop showing up for work (It can also do that against unions now, but couldn't before 2008).
If the company shuts down its location, the employees get laid off. If the company shuts down a unionized location, then the union hold power over the vacant building and must be reinstated when someone else buys it.
Some type of unions being able to exist without government backing isn't much of an argument that the currently existing ones could. Heck, I'm not sure if your "bunch of employees [that] agree to bargain together" even deserves to be called a union.
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Then the airline would hirer different workers. Unions primarily only exists because the Gov gives them special rights. And if the employer violates those rights they sue and the government then uses violence at some stage of the dispute to enforce their ruling.
In my country for most unions at least joining is optional - I joined the union for retail workers when I was a retail worker, and in exchange for a small reduction in my paycheck (about the price of a single homecooked meal a month) I received access to a bunch of services provided by the union. I was happy to support it anyway because they'd also negotiated several really useful concessions and pay-raises. I haven't joined the union for my current industry because the last I checked it was captured by ethnic nepotists who believed that the best answer to falling wages and increased competition in the industry was to massively increase immigration of indian workers into the country.
I think the union was a net good - and companies could absolutely hire non-union workers, who were mostly travellers and students who took the job on a very temporary basis. Most workers just joined the union because it legitimately worked out to be a better deal for them, even beyond the additional negotiating power. I'm struggling to understand your opposition to unions here because the kind of organisation you're describing just doesn't have anything to do with the unions I've encountered in the real world.
Well American ones all promote things I think are awful.
From a broader point unions are bad for society but can be good for individual workers.
The best example in the US was when the big three automakers controlled the US market for cars before Japanese cars entered the market. Auto unions could negotiate hirer wages and since all 3 auto unions had to use auto union labor the automakers had the same costs which means they could all pass the higher autoworker wages on to everyone else.
You know who suffered? Every American who had to pay higher auto costs but didn’t work in a protected industry and couldn’t get similar wages. Everyone else losts.
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