Many people have asked why I haven't rejoined this thread, and the answer is simple: I am trying to some information out of the union, which is so far proving impossible, and until I get it, everything is wreathed in hypotheticals. It seems better to wait -- esp. since none of the answers so far has been much help.
I'm afraid my original post wasn't well phrased. I was more interested in the tactical question. The moral question was secondary; it was an explanation for why I thought this was very unsound tactics.
Many people have suggested that this idea of boycotting a store that isn't on strike -- and there is no doubt that that is what is being called for here; it's at the top of every piece of literature the local hands out -- would be justified if it was an extension of a strike being held elsewhere. But that's the whole problem. So far I've been able to turn up zero evidence that that is true. It's not mentioned in any union literature. When I ask people on the line they say no. When I call people at the union office they say no. And they don't answer my email. If Local 1500 is striking against the Food Emporium anywhere, it's the best kept secret in New York.
I keep thinking that eventually someone will answer my email, or that someday I will call the office and get someone who knows something. It seems silly to have a discussion about whether a boycott against an unorganized store all by itself is a good idea until I'm completely sure that's what is going on.
As for the moral question, I didn't make clear my context. I personally have no problem with the idea of not crossing lines on principle. That if you support unions, this is not so much a moral principle as their principle of existence.
My puzzlement centered more in how I could make the best case for the union's tactics to a Senegalese guy named Hassan who worked for 20 years at the vegetable stand up the street, the West Side Market. He lives on the next street over, and I'm bound to run into someday, and there's no way we won't talk about this. As a man from a clan, he understand the loyalty principle just fine when it comes to explaining my behavior. But since he has friends who got jobs there, that principle might operate differently in his case. I would like to be able to make a case for this on interest grounds. I would like to be able to tell him that this this has worked in the past, and that the end result has been to unionize a store, which is a great thing for the workers.
Because on the surface, it looks like it can only lead to the opposite outcome. Afaict, the workers in that store are furious and wouldn't vote to join this union if it was the last union on earth. If the union has been unable to win majority votes in the past at other Food Emporium stores, it looks on the face of it like this strategy would only make things manyfold harder. I just can't see how it could possibly be efficacious.
I'm no expert on unions tactics, and I was hoping someone would post something I didn't know or hadn't thought of. But so far, those few who have addressed the tactical question seem unanimous in assuming that what I see going on can't be going on. So I'm double checking.
Michael