Was anyone arguing that or am I misunderstanding you? Of course they are free to leave, that's obvious. I think the point was: the employees have that power and nothing will take that away from them.
The gp said there's no way a board can stop employees from leaving and the one I was replying to started with "that depends" and suggested it was a question as to whether the board "believed" employees held all the strings. Though reading it again the parent does seem a bit non-sequitor from the gp which was strictly talking about what the board physically could have done, as in what options they had. The options they had don't really depend on any particular belief - they couldn't have made them stay thanks to the civil war and stuff
