I did a little more googling on this to see if I could find any comment from the Teamster's side.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-07-25/business/chi-funeral-home-strike-20130725_1_teamsters-funeral-homes
A spokesman for the Teamsters, Brian Rainville, said the accusations were without merit.
"They’re feeling the pain from business going down and they’re making false allegations," he said. "The court didn’t make any indication that these allegations were true -- the court basically did nothing but say ‘obey the law,’ which is what we’re doing."
I'd be curious to see if anyone has taken video of the picketers doing anything the funeral home claims they've been doing?
Business going down? They're funeral homes, pretty secure client base, only thing could be migration to lower cost disposal options, which they can also cover. Cremation's cheaper sure, but now you can buy less $90K hearses and hire less thugs to drive them.
Re. Automation in trucking, technology not terribly far off, public will to use the tech, gonna be a long time. Some smart boy will insist on dedicated roads for them which ought to be a boon to the corrupt union infested heavy construction industry. And yeah, much like a train engineer, there would be a stoopid human to watch over things. More likely is more and more transport companies will keep their hubs in right to work states.
As far as unions, they would cease to exist if employers treated their employees as a valuable asset instead of an expensive consumable. And if employees cared about the company beyond payday. But intangibles don't generate metrics, so don't do 'em.