Europe is nice to visit but a giant pain in the ass to do business in. Certainly don't even consider aspiring to anything. If you can manage that, then yeah...France, Spain, and Italy are cheap and have good food and weather :-)
But having a union doesn't mean "never do layoffs" either -- it just means that they are negotiated. Usually that means severance packages are standardized and the layoff process is transparent. It also often means you have to try and place suitable employees internally, rather than let people go while you are actually still hiring for roles that they could be doing.
In general, even with a union, the company has far more leverage anyway (they control the money) -- a union makes it a negotiation between two organizations (one of which, the company, has more power) vs. a negotiation between the HR & legal departments of a company and one individual employee.
In my country we don't have minimum pay in law, but union contract defines minimum pay and they also negotiate collective salary increases. So everyone (even non-union workers) gets higher pay because of unions.
The median per capita GDP numbers say otherwise. I have watched Europe get noticeably poorer in my lifetime. Even the tourists can see it.