If unionization is a significant risk to a business's share price, it is malpractice to fail to assess it and plan accordingly. This sophisticated approach seems like a positive signal to investors. It's like tax avoidance, financially and ethically.
If I close a store in city A and open one in city B because of more favorable taxes, that's tax avoidance without any corruption needed anywhere. The same is true if the motive is a lower risk of unionizing. No dishonesty or hidden payoffs are required.
Corruption is like the air we breathe -- it's everywhere, and we've all gotten so used to it that we don't even notice it anymore. You don't think state and local tax rates (in City A and City B) are also driven by corporate money?
My point isn't that Politician X took a bribe for Corporation Y and that's why taxes are low. I'm saying that laws have been designed in a way that favors those who currently have the most political power. It's so engrained that it's difficult to imagine a system without it. Now, that's not to say that this can't change over time and different groups can't acquire more political power through organizing or otherwise, but in my view the state of things currently is that corporate money dominates politics.
You call them "anti-worker laws", but they are just lobbying for laws which they believe will further their interests, which is exactly what unions do on the other side. Perhaps Whole Foods should not be permitted to lobby for favorable legislation and regulation, but the same restriction should be applied to their counter-parties (the unions).
I'm not arguing that corporations shouldn't be allowed to lobby. Of course they should. I'm arguing that we have a corrupt system that is terribly biased in favor of corporations and against working people and that it results in terrible laws that are easily exploited... and when companies get called out for anti-worker attitudes, they then turn around and blame the very laws they helped enact!
Edit: Even though I don't want to ban lobbying, it's worth pointing out that a quick google search (with more time could find better numbers admittedly) shows how ridiculously unbalanced lobbying is. So, I mean, doing so wouldn't be good but is more radically pro-labor than basically anything that unions are asking for. Corporate lobbying: $3.42 billion. Union lobbying: Less than $50 million. So, like 70X.
The company represents people too; those people just happen to be shareholders, and not employees. There is also a spectrum of companies, from mom-and-pop corporations and sole proprietorships and worker-owner co-operatives through member-owned co-operatives, all the way to publicly-traded corporations.
Worth noting that there's not some Law of the Universe that says corporations SHOULDN'T represent the workers. In the United States, we've made political decisions that they shouldn't, and should instead only represent shareholders.
But other countries have decided differently. And there are calls, for example, to have workers represent 40% of many corporate boards.
You comment makes it clear WholeFoods is looking after their shareholders very well. Excellent.
Are they looking after their employees as well?
Do you want to live in a world where shareholders are the priority, or employees?
Keep in mind, you and everyone you love are employees. So are the people down the street struggling to pay rent, and the guys across town with little food and nothing to lose.
"you and everyone you love are employees" This is a weird forum to make a blanket statement like that.
(I generally agree with your sentiments, incidentally, I would just expect that the ratio of independent freelancers, corporate founders, and outsider oddballs here is extremely high)
I've worked in growing, static and shrinking companies, and don't think it's coincidence that I've been much better treated and compensated all around in the growing ones. To the extent that correlation is causal, employer and employee incentives align.
