There was no union organizing drive at the hair salon in Montana where the employer made the workers sign cards that would forgo their right to form a union -- that's the first piece of oddity with the news the Times broke this morning.

The parent company of the salon said they had distributed the document out of concern that Congress would enact legislation backed by labor that would require employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed pro-union cards, without holding a secret-ballot election. Hmmm, for some reason I don't think they are too concerned with legislation or the workers' rights if they are making them sign off that they have no right to organize.

The CEO says many employees signed such pro-union cards without understanding that it could commit them to joining a union. Mr. Finkelstein said the company’s focus groups showed that employees overwhelmingly favored using secret ballots to decide whether to join a union.

Maybe the focus group he worked with did give him those results, but he shouldn't be countering that effort with a card that says a worker will not authorize any union -- that's, well, union busting when there is no union ... yet.

Evidently word is getting around about this salon and their parent company. Labor is now leafletting and getting the word into the community. One worker quit over the stupidity. And the big iron fist that labor supposedly has in convincing workers to join a union is not present, instead you have supervisors at the salon telling the workers, "Oh, I would sign this document if I were you ..."

As stated, the beautiful irony here is that this is what usually happens during an organizing drive. Until the salon started with this crap, no one knew they even existed.