[Justsignedup]

its signaling. they hope to discourage others form unionizing. Ultimately chipotle will have to negotiate because they can't shut down all their stores, or they're burning their own house to prevent you from gaining a dollar.

[_aavaa_]

This is a collective action problem. "They can't fire everyone" only works if everyone (or enough people) demand the change at once. If the unionization attempt happens one store at a time, Chipotle can close them one at a time. And it's gonna get harder and harder to get the next store to try unionizing after they just saw the previous X all get closed down.

[atwood22]

Depends how hard it is to get another job. I doubt many people are particularly attached to a job at Chipotle. Forcing the store to shut down is more power than the average Chipotle worker has.

[_aavaa_]

Either you or I (or both) are misunderstanding each other’s comment.

My point was exactly that. At a store by store level, the workers have much less power than Chipotle. Even if they vote to unionize the store one at a time, Chipotle still wins if chipotle choose to close the store since it’s less costly for them to open a new store than it is for the workers to find a new job.

[atwood22]

My point is that getting a new job may actually be easy (given the current unemployment rate), so it could still be worth unionizing even if you know they will close the location.