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I would suggest news outlets not use “allows staff to unionize” (wsj.com/articles/eliza…) as the way to describe an employer agreeing to recognize a union of their employees
“Unionize” gets used to mean various things: workers choosing to start organizing; workers forming an organization; workers’ union getting recognition from management, & thus the chance to collectively bargain. (“Unionized” as descriptor of a company usually refers to the latter)
Colloquially, “right to unionize” in U.S. often refers to workers’ right (guaranteed on paper in New Deal law to most private sector employees) to get their union recognized by employer and collectively bargain - if they prove majority support via Labor Board election
But “right to unionize” can also refer to right (also enshrined in New Deal law for most private employees) not to be punished for organizing. Or, for workers classified as contractors, to issue of whether collective bargaining’s legally allowed (as opposed to legally protected).
Much of U.S. organizing now happens not via NLRB elections but via “card-check” or other processes where union pressures boss to grant union recognition once majority of workers have indicated some other way that they want it. Boss legally can, but doesn’t have to, accede to that
1935 National Labor Relations Act faulted "refusal by some employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining" & committed the US to "encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining" and "protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association"
...So, speaking generally...
Saying boss "allowed workers to unionize" could mean they abstained- as law requires -from anti-union retaliation. Or that they agreed to bargain with union that won an NLRB election, as law requires. Or that they agreed to bargain without NLRB election, which law doesn't require
Any of those choices could be noteworthy. Allegations of union-busting are ubiquitous when workers organize &, despite whatever Congress may have intended, actually getting a union contract arguably requires convincing/coercing management to prefer a deal over indefinite warfare.
Assumption many in US make that companies get to decide (maybe under pressure) whether to be "unionized" or not in some ways better reflects current US reality than the aspirations of New Deal lawmakers did. But there is a law that's supposed to leave that choice up to workers.
