closed shop

noun

A business or industrial establishment whose employees are required to be labor union members as a precondition to employment.

Meanings

nounclosed shop (plural closed shops)

plural closed shops

  1. A business or industrial establishment whose employees are required to be labor union members as a precondition to employment.

    [...] about 90 per cent of the locomotive staff belong to one trade union and 10 per cent to another smaller one or to none, for there is no such thing in Switzerland as a "closed shop".

    1963 January, ""Mercury"", “Driver training and single-manning in Switzerland”, in Modern Railways, page 42
  2. historicalcomputingA facility that runs programs on behalf of others, giving them no oversight over execution but merely returning the output at the end.
Cite this entry
APA

closed shop. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/closed%20shop

MLA

“closed shop.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/closed%20shop. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “closed shop,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/closed%20shop.

Source: closed shop on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.