Explain? My understanding is it takes a majority of employees voting to form a union. Is there some process by which a minority can force a union on the majority?
When employees "vote" it may not be by secret ballot. It may be by a method such as card check whereby people know who's voting which way. There is a long history of humans using intimidation to get their way, and without a secret ballot, that becomes a thing.
Beyond that, people have a tendency to vote "yes" on things when they don't know about those things. There's always a fight on referendums on the language to be on the side of the "yes", because "yes" wins most of the time.
Those both sound like situations where the majority has chosen something. Bias towards "yes" sure, but people also have a pretty strong bias towards NO CHANGE - unless things are bad.
I believe the general dislike of secret ballots among pro-union people has to do with the voting process being controlled by the companies. The accusation being that when the company controls the process, they are interfering in the result. Given the choice between coworker interference or employer interference... I'll pick coworker any day, they've got a lot less on me than my employer. If the vote could be truly independent and secret, sure... but burden of proof is high
The union systems in the US and Europe are vastly different
In the US you can only have one Union per workplace and job classification. Employer must treat the union and non-union workers the same. In most States employees have the right to not join the Union, but they are still obligated to pay partial fees to the union.
For example, they cannot pay non-union workers a higher rate wage then the union worker.
