As I’m sure many of you have already seen in the news, there’s been some high profile union pushes recently. How much of an issue will this become for companies?
Out of AMZN, AAPL, and SBUX, I think AMZN has the biggest potential issue here. Their fulfillment centers are large, the work is grueling, and their margins are thin. If an entire FC strikes, it’s not that easy to hire thousands of replacement workers immediately. Whereas with AAPL/SBUX, the union pushes are directed at one individual store. If there’s an issue there, hiring a dozen new workers to replace them shouldn’t be too difficult, not to mention the stakes are a lot lower. 1 store having a labor interruption is a lot less impactful than an amazon FC.
I’m also kind of wondering what happens if these companies just stonewall the CBA negotiations, or refuse to offer them anything better than their non-unionized employees. Is anyone familiar with how this process works and what the obligations are? I can’t imagine that the company would offer the union workers anything better than the non-union workers, otherwise every location would quickly become a union location.
If the unions are successful at getting to AMZN I think they have a lot of problems since their business model is all about low cost.