The Law Is Rigged Against You if You Want to Unionize

[Rogue Valley]

Opinion | Why the Amazon Workers Never Stood a Chance (Published 2021)

Our system of labor law and regulations has too strongly tilted the playing field in favor of companies and against unions.

www.nytimes.com

4/15/21
Labor activists had great hopes for the attempt to organize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., and the effort by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union attracted national attention. President Biden released a video in support of the right of workers to join a union without company interference. But the union lost the election — and in a rout. Some critics claimed it did not do the proper legwork to gain worker support. The lack of a union culture in Alabama meant few workers had experience with one. But the biggest barrier for the union — as it is in nearly every private sector union campaign in the country — is that the system of labor law and regulations created in the New Deal no longer functions effectively. Corporate manipulation of the labor law regime has so strongly tilted the playing field in favor of companies that winning a private sector union election has become nearly impossible. Amazon pulled out the same playbook that employers have used since the 1980s: hire an expensive anti-union law firm, shower employees with anti-union literature, force them to sit through anti-union meetings and bombard them with messages about union dues. This is all perfectly legal under a labor-law regime captured by corporations. It’s been 83 years since we passed comprehensive labor law that helped workers win power.

A highly partisan National Labor Relations Board swings wildly in its decisions, making it impossible to carry out labor policy in a consistent way. Union after union has nearly given up on the expensive and time-consuming process of organizing single workplaces. Even had the union won the vote, Amazon would likely have slowed the process of contract negotiations to a crawl, which can delay an agreement; many companies are able to defeat the union during this process. Winning a first contract now requires a union campaign as intensive as the initial vote. We may be in a period where economic justice concerns are more central to our politics than any time since the mid-20th century. But without a new round of labor law reform, organized labor cannot succeed. This problem has a very clear solution. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act. It would make many of Amazon’s tactics in Bessemer illegal. The PRO Act would bar mandatory anti-union meetings and other forms of employer interference. Employees could cast their ballot outside of the workplace. It would allow newly formed union locals to go to mediation to get their first contract. The PRO Act would once again place unions and employers on a more equal standing.

Part of the wealth inequality problem in America today stems from the ability of corporations to utilize union-busting tactics to ward off a union certification.

This unbalanced situation cannot be ameliorated without new Federal labor laws that level the unionization playing field.

 

[Chomsky]

I'm a strong proponent of private unions. The rise of the great American middle-class during the 50's & 60's was due, in part, to unionism. On the flip-side, I can't stand pubic unions, and believe they have no place in government.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Opinion | Why the Amazon Workers Never Stood a Chance (Published 2021)

Our system of labor law and regulations has too strongly tilted the playing field in favor of companies and against unions.

www.nytimes.com

Part of the wealth inequality problem in America today stems from the ability of corporations to utilize union-busting tactics to ward off a union certification.

This unbalanced situation cannot be ameliorated without new Federal labor laws that level the unionization playing field.

I disagree with basically every utterance in that article.

• It is extremely subjective to allege labor laws are tilted too strongly in favor of employers in this country. It's really easy to collect an absolute ton of NLRB case law examples to build an argument around the exact opposite, that labor law overwhelmingly favors unions.
• Pro-union people are always eager to allege that a company expressing an opinion against unionizing is therefore interference. This is often just absurd. Did Trump ads on TV interfere with your ability to vote for Biden? Did Biden ads on TV interfere with anyone's ability to vote for Trump? No. A company's opinions and speech that favors one thing or another cannot be labeled interference the way union presidents, Democrats, and pro-union foot soldiers like this author always avidly claim.
• The author claims "the system no longer functions" just because the union lost. This is on par with Trump's claims about the 2020 election. He lost, therefore the electoral system is rigged/broken. No it's not.
• The author whines that Amazon hired a labor law firm. This is extremely and comically petulant, for at least a couple reasons. First and foremost, unions always have their own team of militant, aggressive, highly trained labor attorneys monitoring the process of organizing a union vote, locked and loaded ready to pepper the employer with allegations of unfair practices or interference in the lead up to the vote. Under these conditions, every employer must hire their own labor law firm to help steer them away from as many of these traps as possible. Any employer would be an idiot to subject themselves to militant union attorney tactics all on their own, with no attorneys on their side guiding them how not to screw up and end up in a lawsuit.
• The fact that a company can communicate to its employees is not a "rigged labor-law regime captured by corporations." This comment is constitutionally backwards, as it suggests that it took some special rigging to be able to speak to one's employees, and that the natural order of things should be that the government regulates corporate speech to its own employees.

I could keep going, but I'll eventually hit the character limit.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I disagree with basically every utterance in that article.

No you don't. Or at least, such is not in evidence. You disagree with some grotesque misinterpretations and re-wrought utterances that aren't alleged by the article, and make absurd points in response to the ones you do get right. Thus:

It is extremely subjective to allege labor laws are tilted too strongly in favor of employers in this country. It's really easy to collect an absolute ton of NLRB case law examples to build an argument around the exact opposite, that labor law overwhelmingly favors unions.

Not in this case. One side having compulsory access to the decision makers when the other does not is obviously unfair. It's difficult to think of any counter-advantage that could be compensation for that kind of disadvantage to the proto-union.

Pro-union people are always eager to allege that a company expressing an opinion against unionizing is therefore interference. This is often just absurd. Did Trump ads on TV interfere with your ability to vote for Biden? Did Biden ads on TV interfere with anyone's ability to vote for Trump? No. A company's opinions and speech that favors one thing or another cannot be labeled interference the way union presidents, Democrats, and pro-union foot soldiers like this author always avidly claim.

Ignores the fact that people form views largely based on the testimony of others. Following your..."logic," advertising for anything would be a huge waste of time, because people make up their minds in some kind of Platonic vacuum of perfect reason. But in fact, we know they do not.

The author claims "the system no longer functions" just because the union lost. This is on par with Trump's claims about the 2020 election. He lost, therefore the electoral system is rigged/broken. No it's not.

The author has more reasons to support the conclusion that the system no longer functions than merely that the proto-union lost.

The author whines that Amazon hired a labor law firm. This is extremely and comically petulant, for at least a couple reasons. First and foremost, unions always have their own team of militant, aggressive, highly trained labor attorneys monitoring the process of organizing a union vote, locked and loaded ready to pepper the employer with allegations of unfair practices or interference in the lead up to the vote. Under these conditions, every employer must hire their own labor law firm to help steer them away from as many of these traps as possible. Any employer would be an idiot to subject themselves to militant union attorney tactics all on their own, with no attorneys on their side guiding them how not to screw up and end up in a lawsuit.

I wonder, first, if you could point to exactly the wording that indicates whining by the author on this point...and then if a search of your own posts would survive similar such wording. Or, more perspicaciously, your rhetoric betrays biased "reasoning" on your part.

Second, the point seems to be that there are enough loopholes and special circumstances in the process to require such representation--not just of an attorney, but of an army of attorneys on both sides. It starts to become less about what is just and fair and instead about following a byzantine set of agglomerated rules.

The fact that a company can communicate to its employees is not a "rigged labor-law regime captured by corporations." This comment is constitutionally backwards, as it suggests that it took some special rigging to be able to speak to one's employees, and that the natural order of things should be that the government regulates corporate speech to its own employees.

No, but the fact that they required anti-union meetings and utilized work time to broadcast anti-union messaging is manifestly unfair--which is the point. When companies were prevented from such practices, unionization was much more common, and wealth tended to aggregate in the middle class--which fact alone undermines your (so-called) argument here.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I disagree with basically every utterance in that article.

• It is extremely subjective to allege labor laws are tilted too strongly in favor of employers in this country. It's really easy to collect an absolute ton of NLRB case law examples to build an argument around the exact opposite, that labor law overwhelmingly favors unions.
• Pro-union people are always eager to allege that a company expressing an opinion against unionizing is therefore interference. This is often just absurd. Did Trump ads on TV interfere with your ability to vote for Biden? Did Biden ads on TV interfere with anyone's ability to vote for Trump? No. A company's opinions and speech that favors one thing or another cannot be labeled interference the way union presidents, Democrats, and pro-union foot soldiers like this author always avidly claim.
• The author claims "the system no longer functions" just because the union lost. This is on par with Trump's claims about the 2020 election. He lost, therefore the electoral system is rigged/broken. No it's not.
• The author whines that Amazon hired a labor law firm. This is extremely and comically petulant, for at least a couple reasons. First and foremost, unions always have their own team of militant, aggressive, highly trained labor attorneys monitoring the process of organizing a union vote, locked and loaded ready to pepper the employer with allegations of unfair practices or interference in the lead up to the vote. Under these conditions, every employer must hire their own labor law firm to help steer them away from as many of these traps as possible. Any employer would be an idiot to subject themselves to militant union attorney tactics all on their own, with no attorneys on their side guiding them how not to screw up and end up in a lawsuit.
• The fact that a company can communicate to its employees is not a "rigged labor-law regime captured by corporations." This comment is constitutionally backwards, as it suggests that it took some special rigging to be able to speak to one's employees, and that the natural order of things should be that the government regulates corporate speech to its own employees.

I could keep going, but I'll eventually hit the character limit.

As a separate point: I've been an employer in the past. In my experience, the balance of power was ridiculously, hilariously tilted in my favor over against my employees and potential employees, who had basically no power at all in the relationship. I could hire who I wanted to hire at whatever wage I wanted to pay, so long as it was over the absurdly low federal minimum wage. I could make them work in the conditions I wanted to impose, even if they were unsafe ones, without any fear of repercussion. I could make them do whatever I wanted them to do, I could fire them without cause and without fear of consequence, and could ruin their lives going forward if I felt like it. Conversely, outside of one of them going postal, they had no power to injure me at all.

That situation must change, or we are doomed.

 

[Neomalthusian]

No you don't. Or at least, such is not in evidence. You disagree with some grotesque misinterpretations and re-wrought utterances that aren't alleged by the article, and make absurd points in response to the ones you do get right. Thus:

Not in this case. One side having compulsory access to the decision makers when the other does not is obviously unfair. It's difficult to think of any counter-advantage that could be compensation for that kind of disadvantage to the proto-union.

Ignores the fact that people form views largely based on the testimony of others. Following your..."logic," advertising for anything would be a huge waste of time, because people make up their minds in some kind of Platonic vacuum of perfect reason. But in fact, we know they do not.

That's not following my logic. Following your logic, a wife who shares a house with a hardcore Trump supporter is not given a "fair" chance to decide to vote for Biden, and thus government, through its courts or regulatory agencies, should control how much this husband speaks to his wife about politics, or how many hours Fox News is blaring in the background, so that this wife has a fair chance to make her own voting decision.

The fact that people are persuadable doesn't mean the courts, Congress, or a government regulatory agency can reasonably go around prohibiting opinionated speech. Perhaps a federal labor relation should ensure that employers cannot threaten to fire employees for exercising rights that they have, and should not be able to compel unpaid attendance of meetings, but there really isn't a place for regulation of individual or corporate speech or opinions based on arbitrating subjective notions of "fairness" about who gets equal time or opportunity to express their persuasive argument.

The author has more reasons to support the conclusion that the system no longer functions than merely that the proto-union lost.

The reasons are the predictable list of complaints. For example that the company hired attorneys that are alleged to be anti-union. Oh no! How unfair! Meanwhile the union has its own team of attorneys permanently on staff dedicated to being anti-employer. So give me a break. Any employer, literally any, is foolish to not have its own experts on their side of the table when this kind of stuff is going on.

I wonder, first, if you could point to exactly the wording that indicates whining by the author on this point...and then if a search of your own posts would survive similar such wording. Or, more perspicaciously, your rhetoric betrays biased "reasoning" on your part.

It strikes me as whining. You can accuse me of counter-whining if you want. I'm counter-whining about this standard narrative that I've read over and over for years and years about unions and employers.

Second, the point seems to be that there are enough loopholes and special circumstances in the process to require such representation--not just of an attorney, but of an army of attorneys on both sides. It starts to become less about what is just and fair and instead about following a byzantine set of agglomerated rules.

Well I am certain this will become no less byzantine if something like the PRO Act passes. Only more so.

No, but the fact that they required anti-union meetings and utilized work time to broadcast anti-union messaging is manifestly unfair--which is the point.

We can argue all day long about what's perceived as fair or unfair. The PRO Act looks to do a lot of things that I could very easily argue are unfair, and not just to employers, but to employees too. For example, should employees be able to be bothered at their homes and encouraged to sign a card on their front porches in front of union reps? The PRO Act looks to eliminate secret ballot elections so that they can send reps door to door to collect votes by card check. Can you imagine being pressured at your home to vote for whatever politician or for whatever proposition, instead of being able to vote with privacy the normal way? What constitutes "fair" in democratic voting procedures is not something unions or their PRO Act looks to want to promote.

 

[j brown's body]

Unionizing should be a civil right. That would give the federal government a lot more power to investigate allegations of unfair and corrupt anti-union practices of management.

 

[Integrityrespec]

I'm a strong proponent of private unions. The rise of the great American middle-class during the 50's & 60's was due, in part, to unionism. On the flip-side, I can't stand pubic unions, and believe they have no place in government.

We also know that unions have a dubious past, with criminal activity and violence. If workers wish to unionize I'm for them, if they don't I'm for that as well. I don't think anyone should be forced to join a union if they don't want to do that and their job should not depend on them having to join. Everyone knows about Jimmy Hoffa.

Top Ten Union Corruption Stories of the Year - National Legal & Policy Center

The year 2018 saw the indictment, conviction and sentences of plenty of organized labor scams. New York City played host to some of the largest. For sheer magnitude, nothing anywhere could match the network of union fraud surrounding the construction of Hudson Yards, a large-scale, mixed-use develop

nlpc.org

 

[Neomalthusian]

As a separate point: I've been an employer in the past. In my experience, the balance of power was ridiculously, hilariously tilted in my favor over against my employees and potential employees, who had basically no power at all in the relationship.

I've been both an employee and an employer as well, and I never saw it this way and will never see it this way. Just because one party to a relationship might be willing to end the relationship does not mean they have some "ridiculously, hilarioiusly tilted power" over the relationship. When either party can end the relationship, they both have equal power to end it. Employees resign all the time, for whatever reason they want, even if it leaves employers in the lurch or causes them to lose money. Work can't be compelled.

I could hire who I wanted to hire at whatever wage I wanted to pay, so long as it was over the absurdly low federal minimum wage.

That must be nice to have been able to exploit labor like that. I can't do that, nor can a very large number of other businesses out there. I need higher skills and low turnover or else I'm flailing and losing money, which compels me to compete with other employers to offer sufficient pay to attract the types of employees I actually need. Many many other companies are in a similar boat.

I could make them work in the conditions I wanted to impose, even if they were unsafe ones, without any fear of repercussion.

Problems in this area should be addressed by state and federal regulations, not unions. Basic safety should be universal in workplaces and not dependent on whether employees want a union's representation or don't.

I could make them do whatever I wanted them to do, I could fire them without cause and without fear of consequence, and could ruin their lives going forward if I felt like it. Conversely, outside of one of them going postal, they had no power to injure me at all.

At will employment shouldn't ruin an employee's life. By this line of thinking, you ruined the life of every applicant you didn't hire.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Unionizing should be a civil right.

It basically is. Anyone can form and/or join a members-only union. But that's not good enough for unions or the people who support them.

If 51% of workers do not want the union's representation, then should that be considered a civil rights violation of the 49% who did want to unionize?

The problem with unionism being considered a civil right in most cases is that unions want to represent people who do not want that representation. How can they be given this ability to compel representation on people who don't want it? How is that compatible with a person's civil rights? Well, we simply wrote a law that entitles unions to represent people against their will as long as they go through democratic processes of voting for or against it, and by then certifying as an exclusive representative over that entire bargaining unit that they put together. So a line in the sand has to be drawn.

There's nothing prohibiting any union from forming a members-only unit, where no majority vote is required, where no one is forced to be represented against their will, where no one is forced to pay dues as a condition of being employed, and where unions are not forced to protect or represent any non-member. But that's not enough for unions. They want more. They would say the need more. They would say they need to be able to represent people who don't want their representation.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Title: The Law Is Rigged Against You if You Want to Unionize

Well let's say the unions get their PRO Act passed. How would the law then work for you if you don't want to unionize?

The PRO Act would provide for unions being able to demand your personal information from your employer so that they could approach you on your private time to persuade you of the benefits of unionism. The law would not do much to protect your privacy against the interests of unions trying to persuade you to give them your support.

The PRO Act would eliminate the requirement for NLRB-supervised secret ballot elections, so that you could be pressured by union representatives in non-work settings to support them and vote for them by card-check.

In Alabama and about half of other states, if the union had prevailed in the election to organize, the PRO Act would eliminate the rights of workers to refuse to fund the union whose representation they didn't want. The representation would be compelled upon them under exclusive representation privileges, and the state's Right To Work law would be squashed by federal decree, such that even employees who wished not to have that representation would be compelled to have it, but also compelled to fund it through agency fees.

And while not related to employees per se, the PRO Act as envisioned so far has sought to legalize secondary boycotts. But that is a whole other problem.


The changes being fought for by unions right now are not really aiming to promote employees' rights at all. They are only aiming to empower unions with special privileges, regardless of whether it respects principles of "fairness" to or rights of employees themselves.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I've been both an employee and an employer as well, and I never saw it this way and will never see it this way. Just because one party to a relationship might be willing to end the relationship does not mean they have some "ridiculously, hilarioiusly tilted power" over the relationship. When either party can end the relationship, they both have equal power to end it. Employees resign all the time, for whatever reason they want, even if it leaves employers in the lurch or causes them to lose money. Work can't be compelled.

It's not just ending the relationship; it's also selecting the terms under which it starts and continues. I don't know where and in what field you were an employer, but in the retail and warehouse industry in which I worked, as I said, I could hire people under pretty much whatever terms I wanted. I could do this because I know their alternatives were either to face homelessness and starvation, or accept the same offer from someone else.

It is a little different for people who acquire certain skills--getting an advanced degree in engineering, say, or a J.D. does give you some negotiating power. But whether you're able to get such credentials is often a matter of luck (I know because I am now a professor and I sit on my department's graduate admissions committee. We get more apps from qualified individuals than we could ever accept, and it sometimes comes down to a literal coin-flip as to who we select for admission).

That must be nice to have been able to exploit labor like that. I can't do that, nor can a very large number of other businesses out there. I need higher skills and low turnover or else I'm flailing and losing money, which compels me to compete with other employers to offer sufficient pay to attract the types of employees I actually need. Many many other companies are in a similar boat.

I never met one. After my turn in that position, I went on to start a consultancy business before getting back into academia. I built databases and streamlined procedures for dozens of businesses across a wide array of industries and business sizes. Some didn't exploit labor, but all of them could have done--and most did in some way.

Problems in this area should be addressed by state and federal regulations, not unions. Basic safety should be universal in workplaces and not dependent on whether employees want a union's representation or don't.

Sure--that should be the case. But pragmatically, it is not and has basically never been the case. There are reasons for that.

At will employment shouldn't ruin an employee's life. By this line of thinking, you ruined the life of every applicant you didn't hire.

No, not really. In fact, your claim here doesn't follow my points at all. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.

 

[ashurbanipal]

That's not following my logic. Following your logic, a wife who shares a house with a hardcore Trump supporter is not given a "fair" chance to decide to vote for Biden, and thus government, through its courts or regulatory agencies, should control how much this husband speaks to his wife about politics, or how many hours Fox News is blaring in the background, so that this wife has a fair chance to make her own voting decision.

Uhhh...do you live in the 1850s or something? The husband has to live with the wife just as she has to live with him, and she will enjoy the same privileges he does. The wife is not the husband's employee, and doesn't depend on him in contemporary times for her own welfare or survival. She can talk his ear off about Biden just as much as he can her about Trump.

The same does not hold for employees/employers.

To further sharpen the point, if you go back and read up on the arguments made by proponents of women's suffrage and then women's rights in the sixties, the notion that women have to have the same politics as their husbands, and the various power economies that enforced that arrangement, were part of what women were fighting against, and are generally considered manifestly unjust and unfair these days. That is, if things were as you seem to believe they are, then it would be manifestly unfair.

Fortunately, things are no longer that way.

The fact that people are persuadable doesn't mean the courts, Congress, or a government regulatory agency can reasonably go around prohibiting opinionated speech.

I don't think it's that simple. But especially in this case, when the agent broadcasting the message is also the company that pays the one receiving the message, the power differential becomes important.

Furthermore, there's a difference between opinionated speech and speech based on outright falsehoods manufactured for self-serving reasons. Back when I was on the other side, I was party to conversations/meetings in which I and other execs brainstormed various arguments against unionization or other forms of worker organization--not a bit of it based on any research or facts to hand. But we sure presented it as such outside those meetings.

It's an Enlightenment ideal that free speech should be absolute--but no one (not even you, I'd wager) really believes that. I understand the reasons for wanting to safeguard the ability of an individual to state a view without fear of repercussion, but we have to find a way to balance that against the damage that lies broadcast over a large population, or even good-faith views broadcast with the implied threat of power behind them, can do.

Perhaps a federal labor relation should ensure that employers cannot threaten to fire employees for exercising rights that they have, and should not be able to compel unpaid attendance of meetings, but there really isn't a place for regulation of individual or corporate speech or opinions based on arbitrating subjective notions of "fairness" about who gets equal time or opportunity to express their persuasive argument.

1. I'm not sure why you think fairness is subjective. It is not. How anyone can be familiar with history and think otherwise isn't clear to me.

2. Why isn't there such a place?

 

[ashurbanipal]

The reasons are the predictable list of complaints. For example that the company hired attorneys that are alleged to be anti-union. Oh no! How unfair! Meanwhile the union has its own team of attorneys permanently on staff dedicated to being anti-employer. So give me a break. Any employer, literally any, is foolish to not have its own experts on their side of the table when this kind of stuff is going on.

You missed the point, which I will reiterate: once a system grows so complex that it takes teams of specialists to navigate, such that no one person could possibly fully understand the system in its entirety, it becomes a kind of black box. When it comes to questions of justice, having a black box is not only not desirable, it's downright deleterious. Part of the subtext of the author's point is that we need to roll back the changes that have accumulated since the late 1940s, when the rules of disputation were relatively uncomplicated. Either that, or restore a similar state of clarity as existed then.

It strikes me as whining. You can accuse me of counter-whining if you want. I'm counter-whining about this standard narrative that I've read over and over for years and years about unions and employers.

OK--but that really is subjective ("it strikes me as..."), so it's pretty weird that you complain about subjectivity. It strikes me that the author is just laying out an argument. In the absence of clear cues, the better epistemic procedure is to avoid reading emotion into a text.

Well I am certain this will become no less byzantine if something like the PRO Act passes. Only more so.

On what do you base that certainty? Rules of the form "All members of set X may not perform action p" are inherently less complex and inherently involve less complexity than rules that allow some members of X to perform action p under certain circumstances.

As I understand it, most of the PRO act involves rules of the less complex form, which should greatly simplify matters.

We can argue all day long about what's perceived as fair or unfair. The PRO Act looks to do a lot of things that I could very easily argue are unfair, and not just to employers, but to employees too. For example, should employees be able to be bothered at their homes and encouraged to sign a card on their front porches in front of union reps?

So...wait a minute. You just spent quite a bit of digital ink arguing, or at least implying, that employers ought to be able to broadcast whatever messaging they want, on the basis of freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. Are you saying that you don't think union representatives ought to be free to go to someone's home and try to persuade them to sign a card? Apparently you are...in which case, I have no idea how you can pretend to be reasonable. It's permissible, in your view, for an employer to mandate anti-union meetings, but not permissible for a union representative to ask for a conversation on an employee's porch? Something about that seems downright authoritarian. Sure, the homeowner might not want someone coming to their home, but then they just need to ask the union rep to leave.

As for myself, I'd rather allow phone calls or door knocking at home than mandatory messaging meetings at work (paid or not). The homeowner has the right to refuse, without consequence, any knock on their door (except, I suppose, if it's law enforcement--and even then, sometimes you have the right not to answer). You could refuse the meeting at work, but only at the risk of losing your job. No such risk is implied in the door-knocking scenario.

 

[Neomalthusian]

It's not just ending the relationship; it's also selecting the terms under which it starts and continues. I don't know where and in what field you were an employer, but in the retail and warehouse industry in which I worked, as I said, I could hire people under pretty much whatever terms I wanted. I could do this because I know their alternatives were either to face homelessness and starvation, or accept the same offer from someone else.

Starting the employment relationship, ending it, it's really all the same. I don't agree with this presumption of employee desperation. My observation is that people who are in favor of unions tend to subjectively regard employees in this way, very broadly, that they're all inherently desperate and thus employers have virtually limitless bargaining power. Being non-negotiable on terms of a sale doesn't equate to coercive bargaining power over a presumed-desperate other party.

But this presumption of employee desperation sets up a perceived need for unions quite nicely. I don't agree with it. Employees quit their jobs constantly. In fact they quit the jobs that don't pay all that well (which we associate with desperate and otherwise starving people) significantly more often. If they were that utterly desperate, why would they do that? They wouldn't. They're almost never actually desperate.

No, not really. In fact, your claim here doesn't follow my points at all. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.

You just claimed above that your past employees' alternative was homelessness and starvation. If that's the case, then you presumably condemned the applicants you didn't hire to that fate. Perhaps your ethical obligation would have been to give more people jobs than you actually needed to hire, you heartless boss, you.

But I'm being tongue in cheek of course. The broad notion that employees are helpless and desperate is largely false or at least extremely misleading, but useful in trying to create a pretense of dire need for a union.

 

[Neomalthusian]

So...wait a minute. You just spent quite a bit of digital ink arguing, or at least implying, that employers ought to be able to broadcast whatever messaging they want, on the basis of freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. Are you saying that you don't think union representatives ought to be free to go to someone's home and try to persuade them to sign a card? Apparently you are...in which case, I have no idea how you can pretend to be reasonable.

The rationale for NLRB-supervised secret ballot elections (instead of card check) is based on a couple of important things: 1) to prevent employers or unions from intimidating or otherwise pressuring people in their private time to cast votes in the presence of the entity that wants that vote. The same principle underlies why we don't allow the GOP or Democratic Party to collect votes for their nominees by door-to-door tactics, and why we don't permit electioneering at voting locations. 2) It's connected to exclusive/monopoly representation privileges that are given to unions under our laws, that allow them to subject people who don't want the representation to that representation nonetheless.

It's permissible, in your view, for an employer to mandate anti-union meetings, but not permissible for a union representative to ask for a conversation on an employee's porch?

"A conversation" is not what we're talking about, or what the PRO Act aims to legalize.

Mandatory meetings where an employer pleads and begs its employees not to vote for unionism is not the same as the employer standing over them and pressuring them to actually cast their vote against it. The NLRB-supervised secret ballot elections protects employees' rights against voting under pressure by and in the presence of either party.

 

[Chomsky]

We also know that unions have a dubious past, with criminal activity and violence. If workers wish to unionize I'm for them, if they don't I'm for that as well. I don't think anyone should be forced to join a union if they don't want to do that and their job should not depend on them having to join. Everyone knows about Jimmy Hoffa.

Top Ten Union Corruption Stories of the Year - National Legal & Policy Center

The year 2018 saw the indictment, conviction and sentences of plenty of organized labor scams. New York City played host to some of the largest. For sheer magnitude, nothing anywhere could match the network of union fraud surrounding the construction of Hudson Yards, a large-scale, mixed-use develop

nlpc.org

That's fair.