That mostly matches an offer made many years ago by Lane Kirkland to corporate America — let’s repeal all labor law and just fight it out on the streets. Brother Lane is now is heaven with Jesus and Mary, but best I know, the offer still stands. No takers so far from the management side.

Wal-Mart has now confessed that the status quo gives management a voice in determining if their workers can choose a union, an admission that the current system is broken. I know the Hollywood stereotype of the “union goon” (which belongs in the same league as the blackface minstrel) but it seems a hard case to make that employees can’t say no to a colleague and peer at work asking them to sign a petition, but are not intimidated by their boss.

Given that Brother Lane’s offer has not been accepted by management, I’ll suggest a counter offer — we conduct union business under the same rules that stockholder business is conducted. Please get back to me at your earliest convenience.

What bothers me the most about the prose though is that it acts as if there are two interrests, union and nonunion. The two real interests are management and labor.

So, do workers who actively do not want to belong to a union at all, or to the particular union in question, simply not have a valid viewpoint worthy of being registered, or are they de-facto management?

Whatever the costs in PR, having men represented is a bigger priority. Additionally, despite what McGovern says, the card system is fair, decent, and good.

Because no one could for a minute imagine that an institution such as a labor union would stoop to intimidation, harassment or fraud to get a few thousand more people “into the fold” where they have to pay mandatory dues…

It would seem to me that one of the elements of an election that tends to make it free and fair is not only its secrecy, but that it takes place at one time. I would assume that if I had a union rep following me around for weeks or months badgering me to sign, and I told him “no” a couple dozen times, but just once gave in and signed, it would be that single “yes” not the multiple “no”s that counted. And similarly, if after he had managed to get a signature out of me, I changed my mind, I imagine that it would be rather difficult to get my name back off the list of those who had “voted”.

The advantage of an election is that it takes place just once, you can’t keep badgering until you get what you want.

That said, it’s not like unions have proved themselves unable to pull off a bit of election fraud either.

I must admit a certain curiosity: I know that MZ and MM both feel very passionately about unions. Do either of you actually belong to one?

I’m just curious if this is a preference based on experience or on overall political alignment. Myself I have never belonged to a union, nor has my wife (back when she was working). My wife might well have joined the stage hands union back when we were first married, but their policies were such that you usually couldn’t join unless you worked as an unpaid intern at a union theater for several months first — and since we were chronically short of money she worked at non-union theaters instead so that she could actually be paid for her work. My father did join a public employees union in order to keep from being fired, though, after the community college at which he worked unionized in what was pretty clearly a rigged election.

I am supposing even if one thinks more UNION penetration is a good thing why the privacy of the ballot should be sacrificed for that? I guess that is what I am having trouble understanding.

What is wrong with the old system?