Card Check: The Problem and The Proper Response

President-Elect Obama has said he is in favor of doing away with private ballots when company employees vote whether or not to unionize. That seems like a stupid idea to make a change for its own sake but it's worse than that. When the union pushers know who voted against them, they can get tough.

Marge votes against unionizing because she's industrious and gets frequent raises.

The day after the vote, she goes to the parking lot to get in her car and go home

and her car has been keyed.

Then the "Local 213" representative from the AFL-CIO comes to her desk the next day and asks if she wants to reconsider her vote. Politely. Friendly-like.

Yes, it happens.

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Here's what I would say to John Thugissimo from the Local 213:
(delivered sotto voce, right in the ear of the main agitator for unionizing the workplace:)

The next time anything happens to me or mine, you, personally, will regret it. If ANY thing happens to my car, to my stuff, or to my lunch. If my wife's car gets damaged. If a threatening phone call comes in to my house. If somebody even randomly engages in a road-rage incident directed at me or my wife. If a child on the playground so much as calls my child an ugly name:

YOU, my friend, will find yourself in need of a set of new tires and a new paint job on YOUR car. Possibly new windows also. Come to my house and the tree in your front lawn will be on fire. Make a threatening phone call and I'll cut off water to your house with a chainsaw. Try to visit direct violence on me and twenty major-caliber Little Presents will be headed your way.

I'm not interested in collective bargaining, and I'm not interested in some thug trying to intimidate me into joining a union.

Do.

Not.

Mess.

With.

Me.

Are we clear?

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If more people were willing to take that tone, and those actions, the AFL-CIO would be powerless even with public balloting.

In my humble opinion.