When the workers at Suntrapp announced their intent to unionize, within hours the lines were drawn. On one side, the overwhelming majority of people backed the workers, recognizing their right to organize and pressuring Mary Peterson, the owner, to respect their decision. On the other side, a smaller but loud group leapt to Mary’s defense, repeating her claim that Suntrapp is “too small” to unionize.
At first glance, this might look like a debate over logistics or economics. But it isn’t. The workers have not made demands beyond what the bar can handle. In fact the majority of employee demands are non-economic in nature. The argument that Suntrapp is “too small” is not really about size, it’s about ownership.
How people think is deeply shaped by where they stand in society. Workers at Suntrapp live the daily grind of low wages, unpredictable schedules, and lack of security. Out of that experience comes the idea of collective action: a union. Their support for unionization doesn’t come from books or abstract theories. It comes from their practice, their lived reality.
By contrast, those defending Mary are not speaking from the standpoint of labor. They are identifying with the owner because they identify with ownership. Some are small proprietors themselves. Others hope one day to become owners. Still others have simply internalized the idea that “the boss” is the rightful center of any workplace. In every case, their thinking reflects a petty-bourgeois (or small-owner) outlook. They see themselves, not in the exploited workers, but in the figure of the owner.
This is why Mary’s line of, “too small to unionize,” resonates with them. It has little to do with Suntrapp’s actual size. It’s about protecting the principle of ownership itself. If even the smallest bar can be unionized, then no boss is beyond challenge. To people who identify with ownership, that possibility feels like a threat to their own imagined place in the world.
Mao, in On Practice, explained that correct ideas are not innate or handed down. They come from direct struggle with reality. Workers’ support for the union is rooted in that kind of practice: the daily contradiction between their labor and Mary’s ownership. The defense of Mary, on the other hand, is detached from practice. It’s based on ideology: loyalty to ownership as a category, regardless of the actual conditions workers face.
This moment at Suntrapp lays bare a broader truth about capitalist society as a whole. There are two ways of thinking in conflict. One is working-class thinking: collective survival, solidarity, and the demand for dignity. The other is petty-bourgeois thinking: clinging to property rights, defending owners, and aspiring to climb into that position.
So when people side with Mary, they are not really defending a struggling “small business.” They are defending the idea that ownership deserves to stand above workers’ needs. And when they repeat that Suntrapp is “too small to unionize,” what they are really saying is that workers should have no say at all when ownership feels threatened.
There is no such thing as “too small” to organize. Every workplace runs on workers’ labor, and every workplace is big enough for workers to demand power. What we see at Suntrapp is a miniature of the larger class struggle. Workers identify with one another because they share a common life. Bosses and their defenders identify with ownership, whether or not they own anything themselves. The question in front of us is simple: which side are you on?
Leave a Reply