They looked at the issue and felt incorrectly that it would not be better.

Look, I get the good intentions on all the discourse about not judging what's in another person's interests because you can't possibly know what they value, but it sure seems indisputable to me that a union would've delivered better pay and working conditions. I'm not sure in what warped universe voting against that isn't a vote against your interests and I don't think it's at all disrespectful to say they were victims of propaganda to get them to vote against their interests because when I look at the facts, that's what I see.

They probably just examined the same facts as you and came to a different conclusion. They are closer to their own situation, which doesn’t always mean they will make the right decision, but I would be very careful about telling someone how to live their own life.

What set of facts could possibly have made unionization a bad idea? I genuinely can't imagine a single hypothetical which would make voting against this a good idea and would love to hear one.

From the article: “A lot of us are in agree­ment that we don’t need any­body there to speak for us and take our money,” said Cori Jen­nings, 40 years old, who works at the Besse­mer fa­cil­ity and voted against union­iz­ing. Ms. Jen­nings said she and many of her col­leagues were also ea­ger for the na­tional at­ten­tion to fade: “We want our lives to go back to nor­mal.”

For example if they thought it likely Amazon would just close up shop as a result.

Closing it would almost certainly be a lot more expensive than meeting union demands, so I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that is likely.

Regardless, it's a decent argument for a nationwide union to avoid race to the bottom effects.

> Closing it would almost certainly be a lot more expensive than meeting union demands, so I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that is likely.

Not if Amazon thought swift action would act as a deterrent in other locations. This specific thing has happened with other companies, so I don't think it's unlikely at all.

> Regardless, it's a decent argument for a nationwide union to avoid race to the bottom effects.

OK, but the question is whether these specific workers could possibly have any reason to vote against unionization. Maybe they don't find it plausible that a nationwide union will form, or maybe they don't want to deal with the interim turmoil that will befall them personally, even if they would support a nationwide effort. All seem like perfectly fine reasons to me.

"We can't win, they'll just crush us" is 1. wrong on the facts more often than people think and 2. even when true, a good argument for organizing more effectively, not giving up and accepting the shitty status quo forever.

Yeah, how is this relevant to the thread? It's not about why you think we should have unions. It's about the claim that there's no possible rational reason for these workers to vote against the union.

It's not reasonable to assume the hypothetical retaliation you mentioned is likely because there's no evidence that it is. It's certainly understandable why someone would fall for that argument, because it is persuasive on an emotional level, but it's not a good argument in the same way that logical fallacies can often be persuasive even though they shouldn't be.

Walmart is famous for doing exactly that. I'm not sure what else I can tell you if you (a) claim that a certain outcome never happens, when a cursory search shows it does, and (b) actually think that your political opinions are the result of some kind of pure logic chain. They're not.

It's not a 'logical fallacy' to not want to risk disruption of your livelihood, and that's the only relevant question to this thread: is there any set of facts that would reasonably lead the workers to vote against unionization? I think clearly there is, and there's no point arguing over subjective prioritizations. The workers are not 'irrational' for prioritizing their own jobs over the 'national action' that you seem to want. They may even consider that harmful. Not all workers have the same political opinions.

Well to be clear, I would agree with you if I agreed that closing up shop was actually likely. If we assume that just the very act of forming a union, regardless of its demands, would inevitably lead to closing up shop, then of course I agree that forming the union is counterproductive. Where we disagree is on whether or not that hypothetical is very likely.

Really, it seems indisputable to you that someone who’s job is on the line and who probably spent quite a bit of time looking into what was being proposed ultimately decided to vote no must be wrong? I’m curious what better information you have (especially to compensate for the lack of skin in the game so to speak) to come to that conclusion.

Aside from the common sense that collective bargaining obviously puts you in a stronger negotiating position than individual bargaining for the same class of job, there is also plenty of data out there showing that unions deliver results. Anti-union people counter that by flooding the discourse with FUD propaganda that is often very persuasive but just because it's persuasive doesn't mean it is true.

Collective bargaining is 100% better than individual bargaining.

But, collective bargaining is only a single aspect of unions. They're not voting against it because they dislike collective bargaining, but because of other reasons. Collective bargaining is likely not a significant motivator for them because their salaries really are fairly high for the area.

I think in many cases unions are good, and in many others they are bad. I disagree that you can point at overall data and use that decide a specific case. Union data likely has severe survivorship bias, since unions likely tend to exist where they are more helpful.

That might be true on average, doesn’t mean that specific cases could have vastly different outcomes.

I don’t see how a propaganda campaign can push the vote to 70%, this is not Soviet Russia. Money does help but not on this order of magnitude (see Mike Bloomberg or many failed ballot propositions with tons of money behind them).

They had anti-union propaganda everywhere, even in the fucking bathroom stalls. Plus it's a very conservative part of the country that has been drowning in anti-union propaganda for decades on top of the fact that the average moderate American swing voter is also pretty hostile to unions and even a good chunk of the center-left side of the Democratic coalition is too.

Pro-union people have a lot of work to do to restore the reputation of unions more generally. We need to up our propaganda game a lot because we got crushed in the Reagan era and never recovered.

> We need to up our propaganda game a lot

Why can't you just leave them alone?

The unions asked them if they wanted to unionise. They said 'no thanks'. Why isn't that enough for you? If you support workers' right to have a voice then listen to them when they use it. Some individuals are even quoted in the article - they want the unions to leave them in peace!

I don't know your life experiences but I think you've got a funny idea that unions are some kind of perfect good descended from heaven? In reality in most cases unions come with a lot of unpleasant people and politics and aggravation. The workers are already seeing that aggravation with all this unwanted attention. That's one extra problem than they had before, and they don't have any confidence the union will reduce any problems they already had. And the union wants to be paid hundreds of dollars a month for the privilege! What a joke and no wonder people are hostile. I bet people are going to be even more hostile at the next factory these unions turn up at.

You say "leave them alone" like fighting to improve people's lives is somehow victimizing them. It's truly amazing how right-wing anti-union propaganda has brain wormed into so many people.

If someone tells you to leave them alone, then you should leave them alone. If at that point you don't then yeah you're harassing them and they're a victim.

From the workers' perspective, there is an endless supply of people who will offer to take their money or the little power they have in return for supposedly 'fighting to improve their lives'.

Most of them do not really share your interests, and many are actively trying to trick you to use your money and power for themselves.

See for example the majority of politicians.

So far this union has uninvitedly hassled these workers for months, and then reacted angrily when they said 'no thanks' in a vote, so I can understand the workers are not buying now even if they were considering it before!

"Offer to take their money" is an odd way to phrase "literally offering them higher wages."

Lots of people will offer to fix your problems for you, like increasing your wages.

Not all of them will be able to deliver.

Not all of them were genuinely interested in you or your problems in the first place.

Unions have a long track record of working well to raise wages and improve working conditions. But I suppose that's not easy to know if the only info a person consumes about the topic is right-wing propaganda.