I mean that any competent CEO would oppose a union forming at their company because it will objectively be bad for the shareholders of that company. Any CEO who encouraged or did nothing to resist a union forming because of their own moral convictions would be breaching their duty to do what is best for their company. I would argue it would be grounds for firing them
Its a common stall tactic for large businesses to fire leadership after a Union is formed. It means you cannot facilitate a good faith negotiation and places the union in a perpetual limbo that can last years.
This to me is actually a pro-union argument not an anti-union one.
That is exactly the kind of behaviour that any particular individual has no chance to stopping but the ability to negotiate collectively would make that a very unattractive option to a corporation.
Are you going to offshore the entire company as a way to try and get around it? I can’t think of any examples where that has ever happened.
But without that collective bargaining power you are always vulnerable to exactly this kind of thing happening.
Don’t let the ideas of morality, ethical norms or bad PR be your only defence against it happening. It’s sensible to have some other cards up your sleeve to protect your rights.
That's not what I said nor was responding to. The GP asserted that companies have a fiduciary duty to avoid unionizing, and my counterargument is that such activity could be illegal which is actively detrimental to a company's fiduciary duty.
Hmm, if being in management makes him conflicted from making anti-union statements, does being an employee also conflict someone from making pro-uniom statements?
Of course, the owners are not going to support restrictive labor relations laws that are directly aimed at reducing their private property and contracting rights in order to enable their employees to extract above-market wages from them.
But it's pretty hard for owners to prevent this kind of outcome. You are legally restricted from exercising your right to free association and only employing people who oppose unions, if you ever become an owner.
But do they officially make the claim that they would fire anybody who doesn't attend?
I personally would want to fire anybody who wants to form a union, if I was in the situation. Why should anybody be forced to employ somebody who wants to make trouble in their organization?
It's so weird to me that legally companies can't defend themselves against employees working against them, if it's under the guise of a union.
If an employee is disruptive, hostile, negative and harmful to the environment for any other reason, of course they'd be fired, but if they're agitating for a union then it all becomes protected activity.
If an employee was working against the financial interests of the company in favor of the interests of a competitor, a supplier or a favored customer of course they'd be fired, but if it's a union then it becomes protected activity.
To be clear, I'm not making any judgement on unions or at-will employment or anything as being good or bad, or appropriate/inappropriate in any given situation, industry, etc. I just think it's super weird that from the perspective of the employer, you have an obviously cancerous group inside your organization which is actively working to harm you, but you're not allowed to defend against. It's weird.
You mean also if managers under you were very publicly fired for union organization without you being in the loop and then had the whole union friendly group moved out from under you? Otherwise you're making straw man arguments.
Seems more like the layoffs were about laying off the union members. Some CEOs perceive unions as cancer that has to be stopped from metastasis. In countries with stronger union protection laws this move would have been illegal
I wouldn't have minded if he had issued an opinion that the union_might_ do something to members, rather than the leader of the company saying bad stuff will definitely happen to people who side against the company. After all, he has more motivation and opportunity than anyone else to follow through on that credible threat.
Otherwise, is the mob boss in my example just expressing an opinion, too?
That wouldn't make much sense, though. The last thing you'd want to do if you were trying to keep out a union is behave in a way your employees would see as tyrannical.
I can assure you my employer would like the union to fuck off.
In a world where it isn't illegal to fire everyone who even thinks of joining the union, you might have some (ethically wrong) point. That's not in this world.
Isn't this a good thing? If the workers were fed up enough with conditions that they formed a union, doesn't that imply the managers were terrible? Shouldn't terrible managers be fired?
For example, my wife is a unionized nurse. The best thing that could happen at her work is for her manager to be fired. The union has no power in that.
I'm an engineering manager at a software company. I get performance reviews twice per year. It's well understood that if I'm doing a terrible job that I will be fired.
So how did the bad employees get hired at your workplace and stay there before it unionized? Did the company hire 100% good apples before unionization and then suddenly change its mind and start hiring bad ones? Are you really going to assert that firing people is impossible in a union workplace? We both know that's not true.
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