CT Blue

Today the Day joins the anti-union push, and in its usual somewhat muddled fashion, helps push the meme that the only thing standing between America and prosperity is unions, and please to ignore those corporations sitting on piles of cash they won’t even share with their shareholders. We are treated to a sympathetic portrayal of Nick Griseto, who recently purchased the Bradford Dyeing Association in the Bradford section of Westerly. Mr. Griseto, we are asked to believe, is a John Galt type, only with warm and fuzzy feelings toward his employees; who would have no problems with his employees wanting a union, which they had for 30 years under his predecessors, but which he can prove that they really don’t want or need, now that he’s engaged in some classic union busting activity that the NLRB and the courts have enjoined, an action so rare in these anti-union times that it speaks volumes about the magnitude of the violations. Furthermore, we feel Griseto’s pain as he bemoans the fact that he must spend so much money on legal fees to protect his employees from the greedy union – hundreds of thousands of dollars we are to believe – which almost sounds like enough money to, just at a guess, pay the workers he just laid off.

But, there’s more. The Day’s enterprising reporter dug up two employees who didn’t want a union, proving Griseto’s point. It was hard work for the enterprising reporter to find them. He had to venture out on the factory floor, follow Mr. Griseto, and speak to the employees to whom Griseto guided him. Now that’s investigative journalism, and fair and balanced to boot. We are to conclude, based on the views of two hand picked employees, that not a single member of the union actually wants to be in said union, but that all would rather be subject to the arbitrary whims of Mr. Griseto. Is there no union steward to whom the reporter might go for comment? Apparently not.

It might interest the Day to know that Mr. Griseto is not the first employer to maintain that his employees neither want or need a union. In fact, it’s fairly common and often, shockingly enough, and I know this should be hard for today’s breed of trusting reporters to believe, isn’t true. Indeed, one might safely maintain that the more adamant an employer is on the issue, the less likely it is that the assertion is true.