I think people just come at it from an odd point of view. Would trying to minimize AWS bills seem morally wrong to people? No, it wouldn't. But when you try to lower bills of other suppliers, say labor rather than compute, it is suddenly evil.

I'd say that's because reducing labor costs almost always directly affects the employees' quality of life.

This does not apply to reducing your material or compute bills. I can see how in the long run, a third-party making less money from you might affect their employees, but that's more of a long-term, weak and indirect effect.

Corporations aren't people, they don't need food, healthcare and happiness.

What is the point of the economy? To benefit capital exclusively? If you believe that is the case, then I can understand your point of view. If the point is to benefit everyone (albeit to varying degrees), then minimizing labor costs any more than necessary is a moral failing.

Do you have any examples of case law to support this claim you’ve made? As a layman my understand of fiduciary duty is not very good, it is easy to imagine how things might in the long term interest of the business, or might not be, and it seems like it would be extremely difficult to prove either way in court.

> fiduciary duty to do so

Is that actually so?

[delayed]

No. The post represents a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what fiduciary duty is, but that isn't surprising. It seems to be misapplied or misunderstood in the overwhelming majority of times it comes up in conversation.

I mean that any competent CEO would oppose a union forming at their company because it will objectively be bad for the shareholders of that company. Any CEO who encouraged or did nothing to resist a union forming because of their own moral convictions would be breaching their duty to do what is best for their company. I would argue it would be grounds for firing them

This assumes facts not in evidence. Also doesn't seem to reflect a clear grasp of what fiduciary duty is.

Fiduciary duty is the requirement that the managers of a company act only in the best interest of that company and its owners. It would be clearly against the interests of the company and the shareholders to allow the employees to unionize

No, fiduciary duty is broader and more subtle than that.

Your second statement is categorical enough to be silly. In some cases it is true, but if you think a bit on it you'll soon realized it's not hard to construct cases where it is false.

As for fiduciary duty, there are several aspects in this context, which applies to all of your D&O's not the CEO particularly (and less concretely so employees). One is a duty of care (you have to do the job properly). The aspect you are talking about boils down to a duty to act in the best interests of the corporation as you understand them as a professional. That means that you cannot act in the best interests of any stakeholder, third party, or yourself at the expense of the rest. You can't collude with the employees to screw over the shareholders, or the with the majority shareholder to screw over the others, or with your brothers company for a contract, etc. etc. etc. This is commonly mistunderstood to mean "maximize short term shareholder value", but that is not correct. Now as the CEO the board has the right to fire you if they can (majority) agree that they don't like the strategic or tactical direction you are going and you refuse to change tack, but none of that means you have failed a fiduciary duty. If you make a decision and can back it up with experience etc. in some way that other people in your position would likely agree with being a viable plan, you are not in breach of fiduciary duty.

There are a bunch of other things, e.g. disclosure & loyalty, good faith action, etc. but you are getting hung up on the one that is usually misunderstood as a narrow interest in the shareholders.

You would have to be collosally incompetent or disingenuous if, as a CEO, you believe that it is in the shareholders best interest to allow your employees to unionize. Any competent board would fire such a CEO

This lacks imagination, the world is a more complex place than that. At any rate, a) this is not fiduciary duty and b) we hit diminishing returns a while ago.

I would argue they have a fiduciary duty to NOT do so, as "unfair labor practices" are illegal per the National Labor Relations Act.

You don't need to have unfair labor practices to oppose a union from forming at your company

You don't need a union to go after a company in violation of the NRLA ...

That's not what I said nor was responding to. The GP asserted that companies have a fiduciary duty to avoid unionizing, and my counterargument is that such activity could be illegal which is actively detrimental to a company's fiduciary duty.

Everyone has a duty to maintain human dignity, too.

That's a non sequitur, the existence or nonexistence of unions says nothing about human dignity.

"quit or stfu", not being able to meaningfully bargain at place of employment or anywhere else, is not dignified. If you got better solution for this than unions, fine, just say.

Not when acting in the capacity of the CEO of a company

Why are they exempt? And who else is also exempt?

Exactly right. A union is basically a cartel. The whole idea of a union is to nullify at will employement.

At will employment is a steaming pile of trash that benefits only employers (a cartel themselves), and leaves employees unprotected.