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Comment by tadfisher | Hacker News Reader

At this size, shuttering a store in retaliation for unionizing should result in the corporate death penalty. If Apple doesn't want to deal with unions, then they can feel free to make the point moot, by giving their employees an ownership stake in the company.

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> At this size

Size has nothing to do with it. Just because a company is large doesn't mean it needs to start making poor business decisions.

> corporate death penalty

That's a bit extreme. If you want to be seen as objective, this kind of inflammatory rhetoric will only work against you.

> Just because a company is large doesn't mean it needs to start making poor business decisions

To be clear this is also inflammatory rhetoric disguised as what some would have you think is ‘common sense’.

Is it not possible that employees forming a union could be bad for business?

It certainly is, and I would imagine letting the children chained up in your sweatshop go would be bad for business too. On the bright side, their eyes won't be adjusted to the sunlight, so they won't get very far.

Yes, you can frame this as "bad for business". Contrary to what all the armchair economists online will say, you should never just do what's good for business. If we did we would be seeing crimes against humanity. And we do, just not here.

Its always a balancing act. Often what's good for business isn't good, and what's bad for business isn't bad. You need more robust reasoning than that. Because if that's all you're relying on to form your opinions, you have no substance.

When Apple chains children up in sweatshops, please let me know.

My point is that "bad for business" on its own doesn't really mean much. Often people can't see the holes in their arguments or beliefs. But when you enlarge the view and take it to its logical conclusion, the holes become obvious.

And my point is that a store deciding to unionize could negatively impact the business. Calling for the death of the company, and inciting images of child slaves in chains is not an argument against that. It's an appeal to emotion.

It's not an appeal to emotions, it's a logical argument.

You're saying "well okay it could negatively impact business".

I'm replying "that doesn't mean anything, and sometimes negatively impacting business is very good".

It's not enough to just say something. You need to explain WHY. So what? Who cares? If you don't answer that, I'm sorry, you don't have an argument and anyone wise would choose to not listen to you.

It's bad for business. Okay let's assume that's true. So what? What's the big idea? What's the cost versus the benefit?

> sometimes negatively impacting business is very good

This is an oxymoron.

But they are willing to close stores for the specific purpose of no longer being in the jurisdiction of a specific court. So this is not a stretch at all.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/2/22/18236424/a...

So if a company is about to close an underperforming store and the employees get wind of it, all they have to do is sign union cards and the company has to keep the store open forever?

No? That's not what the person you're replying to said, nor what they meant, nor is it a logical implication of what they said.

We don't have card check unionization in the United States.

Forming a union is much more difficult than you propose.

It's just an expression. The point is, what happens after a union is formed?

It's not relevant. Unionization takes months at least but usually years. The workers at this store in Maryland had their first vote in 2022. The campaign started in 2021. The NLRB moves like molasses and heavily favors employers.

If workers had a notion that their store was underperforming, there's no way anyone could unionize fast enough to prevent it from closing. So it's not a realistic hypothetical. In fact, the company would probably close an underperforming store sooner if there was a unionization drive and would have plenty of time to do so before certification.

> In fact, the company would probably close an underperforming store sooner if there was a unionization drive and would have plenty of time to do so before certification.

Presumably closing the store in response to an attempt at unionization would be the same thing?

Legally, closing an underperforming location in response to a unionization attempt and after a successful unionization are completely different situations.

After unionization, what is required when closing a store is written into the negotiated contract.

The contract isn't really the issue. It's what the law should be.

The parties could put nearly anything they want into the contract. But if the company intends to close the store then they'd just not accept anything in the contract that makes it difficult to close the store, and if the workers go on strike then they were going to close to store anyway.

Plenty of unionized companies close locations. What happens is usually covered by the union contract.

Unionizing a workplace is insanely difficult. It requires tons of bureaucratic work (to meet the standards set by state labor agencies) while also trying to get a large number of people who probably don’t know each other well, if at all, to all agree on a few things, all while risking their employment. This work often takes years. And all of this organizing work is unpaid labor on top of one’s regular job (which is already likely underpaid/overworked, hence the organizing effort). There is no “all they have to do is sign union cards.” The scenario you pose is practically impossible.

utterly absurd

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