The Knead pizza chain in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, recently decided to close for good.
This may have been in response to an effort by its employees to form a union. The owners aren’t saying. (They did say that the closure would happen regardless of how the vote to unionize came out.)
The employees have filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, which is curious since it’s unclear what the NLRB can do to a business that no longer exists.
Apparently, the employees are claiming that the owners ‘unlawfully closed the business.’ Which is a pretty startling claim, when you think about it. Is there a law that says the owners of a business can’t quit? That would be something right out of Atlas Shrugged.
What I found especially interesting was this comment by one of the former employees:
They chose to close the business rather than sit down as equals and discuss the things that would significantly improve our lives.
But owners and employees aren’t equals. And I don’t mean that in a political or social sense, but in an economic sense.
Here’s how you know that’s true. Only the owners can lose money on the business. The most an employee can lose is his job.
When you see employees offering to share in any losses incurred by a business — as opposed to collecting compensation regardless of how well or badly things are going — then they can start talking about discussing things as equals.
(‘Sorry, but next week, instead of paying you, we’ll need you to come up with a thousand dollars to help cover some unanticipated expenses.’)
Until then, they’re vendors, who happen to be selling their time, knowledge, and expertise. And, as this incident shows, they forget that at their peril.
