"Obviously" requires the act of perception, but why would management take the time to perceive the situation? Remember the old adage "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"? Much the same applies here. Management's job is typically to follow the trodden path and do what everyone else that came before them also did, not to actually develop and lead in newfangled directions. They have no reason to consider if opposing joining a union is actually worthwhile, it's just what you do.
If you are old enough to remember the IBM adage, you might also be old enough to remember when management would only hire college graduates. That's what everyone else did, so they did to. It obviously made no sense at the time to anyone who actually looked, but that was the status quo, so management customarily followed suit without evaluation. But look now: Businesses no longer do that. Finally, something broke the status quo and overnight management had to give it some thought and realized that it was nonsensical. Obviously management acting in some way does not imply how obvious something tangentially related is.
> I do know a company where the owner voluntarily recognized the union… one company.
Sure. And nothing magical happened, right? Obviously. What could happen? Unions aren't magic. And with enough of these people going against the grain eventually everyone else starts to take notice that the status quo may not be what it seems, but it's a long road to see that kind of shift. It took decades upon decades upon decades from when everyone noticed that the college thing was the most braindead idea ever to actually seeing management in general change their ways. It took the limited number of pioneers willing to challenge the status quo to eventually see the change take place on a wider scale.
As before, management isn't some kind of all knowing super being. It's just irrational humans who follow the crowd without much thought or reflection. In fact, I posit that people in management in particular are especially prone to not putting much thought or reflection into things as avoiding that line of thought is what helps propel them into management. You don't often see the staunch engineer who wants empirical data for every last decision make it into management. They typically don't make for good managers, even if they should on paper, as managers have to work the crowd and the crowd isn't driven by data. The crowd is driven by arbitrary emotions.
> That's what the "obviously" is for.
"Obviously" requires the act of perception, but why would management take the time to perceive the situation? Remember the old adage "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"? Much the same applies here. Management's job is typically to follow the trodden path and do what everyone else that came before them also did, not to actually develop and lead in newfangled directions. They have no reason to consider if opposing joining a union is actually worthwhile, it's just what you do.
If you are old enough to remember the IBM adage, you might also be old enough to remember when management would only hire college graduates. That's what everyone else did, so they did to. It obviously made no sense at the time to anyone who actually looked, but that was the status quo, so management customarily followed suit without evaluation. But look now: Businesses no longer do that. Finally, something broke the status quo and overnight management had to give it some thought and realized that it was nonsensical. Obviously management acting in some way does not imply how obvious something tangentially related is.
> I do know a company where the owner voluntarily recognized the union… one company.
Sure. And nothing magical happened, right? Obviously. What could happen? Unions aren't magic. And with enough of these people going against the grain eventually everyone else starts to take notice that the status quo may not be what it seems, but it's a long road to see that kind of shift. It took decades upon decades upon decades from when everyone noticed that the college thing was the most braindead idea ever to actually seeing management in general change their ways. It took the limited number of pioneers willing to challenge the status quo to eventually see the change take place on a wider scale.
As before, management isn't some kind of all knowing super being. It's just irrational humans who follow the crowd without much thought or reflection. In fact, I posit that people in management in particular are especially prone to not putting much thought or reflection into things as avoiding that line of thought is what helps propel them into management. You don't often see the staunch engineer who wants empirical data for every last decision make it into management. They typically don't make for good managers, even if they should on paper, as managers have to work the crowd and the crowd isn't driven by data. The crowd is driven by arbitrary emotions.