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.