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Comment by bluesign | Hacker News Reader

So it is little worse than unions done good.

That's an odd critique considering coops exist to solve the friction between unions and businesses by building the democratic control into the business itself, avoiding the need for a union.

Especially when you consider all the union busting tactics used by leadership at traditional businesses – how are you even supposed to form a union when they won't let you? Coops come at that from a different angle: you get democratic control, straight up. Don't like your leadership if you choose to structure the business that way? You can actually vote them out of their role.

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections

If you have broad support from the employee base, “they” can’t block a union certification election. If you’re having trouble forming a union, you’re probably struggling at the “get employees to want your union” step in the process.

You should let Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart and similar know this. Their union busting tactics are widely documented (including shutting down locations starting to form a union).

They do know this. Many of their tactics are specifically directed at “make the employees not want the union”. Some of those tactics are under-handed, even despicable, but it’s safe to say that they know this and act in accordance.

Firing everyone in a store in the process of unionizing isn't "make employees not want the union", it's retaliating against those that do and instilling fear in the rest.

You might not like the methods (and in some cases, they are not legal), but I think that’s exactly what it does. Fear makes (some) people not want the union.

Firing pro-union employees also obviously directly reduces the number of employees who are pro-union.

So I’m guessing your head has been in the sand for the last decade while Starbucks and Amazon shut down places that attempt to unionize?

"Especially when you consider all the union busting tactics used by leadership at traditional businesses – how are you even supposed to form a union when they won't let you?"

Even when you manage to form a union, companies have ways of screwing you over.

Case in point was the recent successful unionization of a Starbucks location in Seattle you might have heard about on the news. Starbucks' reaction? They just closed that location.[1]

[1] - https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/business/starbucks-closure-un...

Normally with union done right, you would have voice in management. Problem is all you see is non-working unions ( union busting etc also from sibling comments)

Thats why I commented union done good from the beginning.

There are coops where a union acts as a VC of sorts. Unions are supposed to take over bussinesses and turn them into Coops. Workplace democracy is always the end goal, decent compensation is just a step along that route and arguably even at times a distraction.

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