Did you miss the surrounding context? His point is that NY has very strong worker protections, and that it's much better to let a non-unionized company set up in NY and then organize it, rather than trying to make organization a condition to entry.
No? I don't understand how you're connecting these dots.
It's not like we have to wonder whether the union strategy worked here. It demonstrably failed. Amazon didn't buckle, they didn't accept Whole Foods unionization as a condition of setting up shop in Queens, and the union will not in fact see a single additional job as a result of what happened.
"the union will not in fact see a single additional job as a result of what happened"
That assumes that all union organizing will now cease or come to nothing, and the unions will get no benefit from keeping a huge, dedicated anti-union company out of their back yard.
Once again, we don't have to wonder whether this particular strategy worked. It demonstrably did not. Workers in NY state and at Whole Foods are worse off than they would have been. This is a setback for the effort to unionize Whole Foods.
You seem to be confusing strategy (long term thinking) with tactics (short term thinking)
I wish I could understand why you seem to think it's a no-brainer that workers should unilaterally resign what they see as their long term interests to accept unquestioningly a corporate agenda with uncertain benefits for them in an indeterminate future.
It doesn’t matter who’s side we’re on. I think Whole Foods should unionize. What was done here to try to accomplish that backfired, spectacularly. Labor will have less of a voice in similar negotiations in the future.
