over the course of the late 1970s, businesses had begun to freely flout the laws protecting workers’ rights to organize, accepting fines and fees as a tolerable cost of doing business. Today, one in five unionizing drives results in charges that employers illegally fired workers for union activity, despite federal protections. It’s illegal to threaten to close the workplace rather than be forced to bargain with your employees, but the majority of businesses facing union drives do it anyway.
