Can Amazon now just shut down that warehouse and fire all the workers?
It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.
It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.
It only seems like a sensible business move if you ignore the incredibly negative PR that'd come from it. You're laying off a lot of local workers and publicly making a target of yourself after the vote passes. Usually businesses will shut down sites before the union vote while they can still sort of BS their way into saying "Well, it looked like the vote would've failed anyways - look at this internal polling" - doing it after unionization is going to add a lot of vitriol to the situation, much more so than the underhanded techniques they use to sway the vote.
They cannot afford to close this shop, and it's obviously playing a big role as to why this location has successfully unionized while the location in Alabama has not.
I'm not saying that's good. But I'm saying Amazon might think it can't afford to let the employees unionise.
I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon announced the closure of this fulfilment centre. It would seem dramatic but if it kept other centres from unionizing I could see Amazon taking the short-term discomfort.
I don't know what Amazon's calculation will be in these circumstances. If Jeff was still in charge I reckon the fulfilment centre would be closed down.
I think you're underestimating the long term pain Amazon is opening themselves up to by closing a recently unionized site. With a labour shortage and extremely high churn Amazon is already having hiring issues - scabs aren't really on the menu if you're already scraping the barrel and a large employer in the local market.
They would? Why? How does the existence of a union prevent a company from firing everyone if it wants to? My understanding is that the only power of a union is that all of its members use collective leverage to get better deals. There is no collective leverage action if everyone is fired.
Then make all the workers redundant, but let the third party offer them employment.
Then if the union makes undue demands, the third party can go bust and Amazon buy back the centre for pennies on the dollar, but without most of the staff.
Unions have upsides, and downsides. Discussing them helps people make good decisions. Pretending it's all flowers and rainbows does not.
Please don’t ask leading questions like this, they’re not helpful to the discussion.