LITTLE ROCK — Dear Irate,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, but I'm not sure whether (a) you really believe that the unions' card-check proposal doesn't threaten workers' rights to a secret ballot, or (b) you think I'm dumb enough to believe it.
Yes, an election over whether to unionize a plant, complete with a secret ballot, would still be theoretically possible under this scam, but only if the union failed to get a majority of workers to sign up for the union. And unions seldom settle for less than a 50-percent sign-up rate when they set out to organize a workplace. (Anything less and experience indicates they'd be likely to lose the election.) Which is why they usually aim for a much higher rate of sign-ups, say 60 or 70 percent of the work force.
Once a union signs up a majority of workers at a plant, it's in. After that, there can't be an election even if a majority of the workers want one. No matter how many workers might have been bullied into signing up.
That's the great advantage of the secret ballot: It frees workers to make their own decision in private. Cards can be collected anywhere-in public, at workers' homes, on the street, or wherever union organizers can track workers down.
Once a sizable majority of workers sign those cards, you can kiss the secret ballot in union elections goodbye. This card-check bill also gives government the final say over the terms of any contract negotiated. As in any totalitarian state.
One great advantage of the card-check system for unions is that, unlike the secret ballot, it lets the union, and everybody else, know who has not signed a card. That way, a union can compile a list of those workers it needs to "persuade." And organizers can find ways to harass them till they do.
Who's really out to protect the workers' rights in this fight over card-check versus the secret ballot? It's not the unions.
Yours for free elections-and the secret ballot,
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Dear Reader,
It was wholly a pleasure to get your sympathetic note in response to my column the other Sunday noting that The New Yorker's (overly) esteemed Malcolm Gladwell doesn't know jack about the small-town South.
His ignorance was copiously illustrated by the expose he did for that once respected journal. This time his target was Atticus Finch, Esq., of fictional Maycomb, Ga., the hero of Harper Lee's little classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. By now I have heard from a number of others south-and north-of the Mason-Dixon Line who share our view of the sadly uninformed Mr. Gladwell.
As you point out, Brother Gladwell is a native ofEngland, but he was reared in a small town in the South-of Ontario, Canada. This may explain his ignorance of all things Southern, but one's ignorance is no excuse for not trying to correct it.
I understand that Elmira, Ontario, is a quaint community that still bears traces of its Mennonite past, but anyone who thinks Elmira, Ont., bears much of a resemblance to a small Southern town . . . well, no need to go into detail.
Why would The New Yorker let one of its writers so embarrass it? Theories vary. Maybe it just doesn't have any real editors any more. The decline and fall of The New Yorker is one of those small markers by the side of history's road that lets us know civilization is fading. It's the same message sent when professional tennis players started wearing gaudy colors instead of respectable all-white for their matches.
I can only imagine what the late great Harold Ross would say about the painful devolution of the magazine he started in the middle of the Roaring Twenties. No doubt the air would have turned blue and various hues of purple if he could see what they've done to his baby.
Thank goodness for the cartoons, the magazine's redeeming feature. They haven't spoiled those yet.
As for Editor Ross' wholly different successor, Wiliam Shawn, a less demonstrative sort but just as talented an editor in his low-profile way, that gentleman would probably have contented himself with a slow, sad shake of the head at what's become of his magazine.
I can only speculate about what in the world seized hold of the editors when they let this extended rant of Mr. Gladwell's see print. Was it because his piece revolves around what used to be called the Negro Problem, which was always more of a white problem? Anything to do with race tends to make some people crazy. Or as Atticus Finch himself explains in To Kill a Mockingbird, "Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand." Neither do I.
Fortitude,
Inky Wretch
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Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 08/26/2009