[dhnsmakala]

This makes a lot of sense. A large business doesn't rely on the average employee. The employee relies on the business for food, shelter, healthcare...everything.

It's just an inherently large imbalance, and the only way it doesn't exist is if there is a shortage of employees in the sector and the ROI per employee is high. This is a pretty small percentage of jobs.

Unions are one way to try to curb exploitation, but I don't know how effective they are in practice. If retail workers tried to unionize what is to prevent the millions of people who are equally qualified from replacing the entire union?

[geofft]

> I don't know how effective they are in practice. If retail workers tried to unionize what is to prevent the millions of people who are equally qualified from replacing the entire union?

See the strike of grocery workers at Stop and Shop earlier this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Stop_%26_Shop_strike

They are effective in practice.

(Some possible first-principles reasons why this might be true: training replacement workers is hard and the labor market is not quite that liquid; new workers will want union representation too; new workers will want good wages too; the fact that the Teamsters respected the strike and union truckers refused to deliver across picket lines meant they'd have to find replacement non-union truck drivers too.)

[capitol_]

Unions work well if a large part of the workforce in that sector are members, see the nordic countries for examples.

It's a bit like herd immunity.

[goatinaboat]

If retail workers tried to unionize what is to prevent the millions of people who are equally qualified from replacing the entire union?

We know the answer to that because film extras (and most screenwriters) are of a comparable replaceability to retail workers but the Hollywood unions are strong.