Ah, gotcha. Well, my point stands. Unless your hypothetical hand-waver is unemployed or already in an union, I suppose.
I'm not American, so I don't know how hard it is to unionize in the US. Over here there are massive unions with country-wide presence that typically can set up where needed, as well as segment-specific unions. I'm pretty sure you can either start a new one with a handful of people or just... you know, call a preexisting one and sign up. I've heard about companies in the US having way more restrictive steps, having to agree company-wide to unionize and stuff like that. That's... not how we do it.