So's operating a taxi without a license or running a hotel in a residential area. If you can get enough investor money to ignore the consequences, laws don't stop this.
You are smuggling a connotation in with your denotation. When most people think of "crime", they think of robbery, assault, and other violent acts. They don't think of disregarding various business laws or (to use an example I think you'd agree with) possessing and using certain drugs. To give another example: By the technical definition, Martin Luther King committed crime by violating the racist laws of the south. Yet one should immediately become suspicious of anyone who says, "MLK was a criminal."
The technical term for this is the noncentral fallacy.[1]
Nestlé straight up murdered a worker for unionizing, but sure, the problem is that the flagrant lawbreaking is not representative of corporate conduct, because only unpopular laws are publically broken.
I don't understand what you're getting at. Do you think I want union organizers to be fired from their jobs or murdered? I was simply pointing out that your argument is a cheap dig that could also be applied to pot smokers and MLK. People who disagree with you will see it as such and remain unconvinced by your arguments.
If you want to convince people, you have to figure out what would change their minds, not just hector them. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.
Maybe by presenting examples of hidden and public corporate disregard for law in their pursuit of profit. If you don't like the idea of a law as an absolute, maybe the same examples, framed as being against the public good. I want sunion organizers negotiated with, not fired OR murdered. If you're willing to overlook hidden events as "improbable" and public events as "not that bad" I don't really know what would convince such a person.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr went to jail 29 times in his life for committing a crime. He definitely committed crimes and was willing to face the consequences of them.
And just as an observation, the comparison of the way that Kickstarter treats their employees and MLK is... stretched.
Uber drivers aren't driving around picking up fares to take to an unknown destination. AirBnb renters don't have vacancy signs out front. There is a difference.
In the United States, it is not a crime to unionize. It's a crime to fire employees for trying to unionize - though if engaged in an at-will employment agreement (as in this case), then the employer can terminate the contract for virtually any reason, without recourse.
No, they would pay out a settlement on a wrongful termination claim and send employee on their way. I’ve never seen a forced rehire outside of an existing CBA. And with those, have seen some pretty bad employees get back in the door. IME, most often CBA’s protect the bad more often than protect the ill-treated. Some say it’s a fair trade-off, but I have bags of bad examples and not a single good example. I’m not saying some companies don’t fire in retaliation, etc., but I’ve only ever seen the grievance process on a firing help bad employees IME. So am predisposed to be critical of them.
