Employers' right to shut down entire business for antiunion motive upheld by SCOTUS in Textile Workers of America v. Darlington Mills (1965)

Are there any conditions on that? Could they take all the data/IP/etc and open up under another name?

No shutting down the whole business is the one legal form of retaliation

There is more than one legal form of union-busting. They could’ve reorganized departments and “eliminated positions,” but instead they chose to throw everyone out on the street as collective punishment to send a message.

This is why reporters need to form independent, co-op, subscribers-funded news in order to avoid the strings and slavery of corporate advertisers and exploitative owners. Corporate news doesn’t work.

These reporters are always free to start their own blog, alone or collectively.

Sure, it's not like a new business has any operating expenses or cashflow requirements.

So DNAinfo owners should run an unprofitable business but the reporters should not?

Profit, startup capital, and cash flow are quite different things. I don't believe that Joey Rickett's decision was a coincidence motivated by pure fiscal math either.

If it was profitable, others can do it themselves. Plenty of bank loans available.

If it wasn't profitable, then the owner was essentially donating money until now and this whole thing would've ended even sooner under other conditions.

see link I posted above. not quite simple.

old, but relevant http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

Wow. It's rulings like this that have driven jobs to other countries. You should always have the option to legally shutter your business and liquidate its assets.

Members of the union would then be free to collectively band together and purchase such assets if made available for sale as a whole.