[estearum]

I'm sure the company pressure is far, far more salient in 99.9% of cases than the unionization pressure, but I think for any collective agreement like this we oughta shoot to eliminate as many sources of coercion as possible. I can definitely imagine certain industries where it would definitely paint a target on your back to oppose unionization.

Seems like the solution is to just allow ad-hoc anonymous votes upfront?

I appreciate you walking me through this though!

[anigbrowl]

Yes, but then the company complains that something it doesn't like is being organized in its property (the workplace) using its resources (employee time, space and electricity for the vote collection/tabulation etc). Plus the people trying to organize the secret ballot are easy to identify.

It's considered perfctly normal for owners of a company to delegate their power and responsibilities to managers, but whenever employees try to delegate things ao tunion 9/10 times the owners scream and cry and allege dark conspiracies.