We all too often hear claims by labor bosses that employers engage in illegal efforts to prevent union organizing. Today, the Heritage Foundation helps shed some light on some of the harsh realities of the tactics employed by union organizers. Further evidence that the best way to prevent intimidation and harrassment in the workplace is through private ballot elections.

Rian Wathen, Former Organizing Director for the UFCW discusses how authorization cards are often collected.

Hat tip: James Sherk

From an e-mail to a colleague, sent 10:52 a.m., November 29. “Mark the time: 11 a.m. Saturday. Carter predicts some union activist will say pass the Employee Free Choice Act to prevent this kind of trampling death.”

News release, Wal-Mart Watch, an anti-Wal-Mart organization, 5 p.m., December 2, “Wal-Mart Watch Statement Regarding Wal-Mart Worker Tragedy on Long Island“:

“Wal-Mart’s stubbornness makes the Employee Free Choice Act the next best alternative. The legislation will make it easier for workers to form unions should they choose to do so — and more difficult for Wal-Mart to thwart the process, which it has done time and time again. 

That’s pure exploitation of a tragedy for political ends, once again proving the adage that the left cares only for humanity in the abstract, and individuals be damned.

UPDATE (6:35 p.m.): Michael Moynihan at Reason.com spots the phenomenon as well, in this case the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union exploiting the terrible events. From “There’s Safety in the Union“:

It is true, in its way. Perhaps the UFCW could argue that had the Long Island Wal-Mart been a union shop, wages would be much higher, as would be the price of the products on its shelves—thus potentially preventing the crush of bargain hunters.

In other Wal-Mart stampede news, the New York Times refers to the death in Long Island as a “shopping Guernica,” comparing the trampling death to a Nazi bombing raid during the Spanish Civil War. And according to the Times, it was all rather predictable anyway, because big business like Wal-Mart are controlling our minds and making us kill for plasma televisions.

Awful, awful, awful. Is no one capable of observing a moment of silent sympathy?