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But you can say "unions are bad." What you can't do is make baseless claims about the concrete outcomes of negotiations, precisely because they are negotiations

But you can say "unions are bad." What you can't do is make baseless claims about the concrete outcomes of negotiations, precisely because they are negotiations between two parties. So, for instance, if he says employees will be "less empowered with a union", that's something concrete that depends strongly on what the negotiated contracts with the union look like. How can he possibly know? The only possibility is to interpret it as a threat, e.g. I will not allow for a contract that empowers employees more.

SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
Yeah. I was thinking it might be something like this, which, I mean, it's a somewhat plausible argument if there's some additional context. On its own though, it seems like a bit of a stretch, and I am inclined to think that if you have to stretch that far for something, constitutionally protected rights should prevail. They shouldn't be curtailed on the grounds that somebody's words merely could be interpreted a certain way without at least some evidence that they are either meant to be, and/or will be. I'm sure part of the argument is that he was expressing his opinion while being interviewed as "The CEO of Amazon", not merely being the CEO at the same time as he made the remarks, but still... Having done a bit of reading it seems the judge might not be totally impartial, so that might explain it. So it might just get overturned at a higher court anyway.