4 ms·

Because their employer can't go bankrupt if they happen to bargain themselves an impossible deal.

• jhayward 10y ago
  Of course they can. Every city, county, state, individual and corporate entity in the US can go bankrupt. The federal government can't, technically, but it can default,
  • ak217 10y ago
    States and the federal government cannot meaningfully go bankrupt. The problem is described in the article. While cities and counties can technically go bankrupt, they will externalize the costs and take on debt burdens at taxpayers' expense before they do so, to an extent that private companies are not allowed to. There have been just 9 city and county bankruptcies in the United States since 2008. Only 6 of them resulted in debt shedding, representing less than $30B in debt. That's 0.06 percent of total municipalities that could theoretically go bankrupt. In that time, tens of thousands of business entities and hundreds of publicly traded companies, representing trillions of USD of capitalization, have gone bankrupt. The overall ratio of public:private sector economy in the US is roughly 1:2.