There’s a great article in The Washington Post about the store Wal-Mart closed in Quebec when some workers there tried to unionize.

No one believes it when The New York Post writes that workers are the ones who get hurt by pushing Wal-Mart out of business or out of town, but maybe they’ll believe it from a traditionally liberal paper.

Here’s one worker who’s not happy with what the union folks accomplished — i.e., doing away with a decent-paying job:

“I never had a job as good as this before,” said Lynn Morissette, 44, who tracks inventory in the store. “I worked in the daytime. I thought I had a good wage, and I was a shareholder, too, so I could save up some money. I was going to retire here.”

Interesting… Doesn’t Morissette know she’s an oppressed worker working for slave wages? I guess it must be that false consciousness stuff I’m always hearing about.

And, so, who was intimidating whom, anyway? Wal-Mart is the big, bad wolf, right?

No?:

Those who did not want a union say organizers harassed them to join. “People signed the cards just to get some peace” from the union organizers, said Noella Langlois, 53, who works in the clothing department. “They thought they would vote against it in a secret vote.”

In fact, there was a vote last April that rejected the union. But under Quebec labor laws, the organizers could try again. When they collected signed union cards from 51 percent of the employees, the law declared the Jonquiere Wal-Mart a union shop.

Pelletier, the Wal-Mart spokesman, says the Quebec laws are unfair, and only a secret ballot would show the true feelings of the workers.

“Signing a union card, when there’s someone on your doorstep at night saying, ‘Sign this card,’ should not be the last word,” he said. “A democratic, secret vote is the only way to avoid intimidation by either the union or an employer.”

Interesting. So, it was the union harassing people.

Those who liked their jobs and said they were happy at Wal-Mart are bitter at the union for its tactics, which they blame for the store closure.

“We were duped by the union. There was absolutely no need to unionize,” said Rejan Lavoie, 40, a single father who took a job as a department manager at Wal-Mart to be home in the evenings with his 8-year-old son. He fears he will not find another job with a workable schedule.

Does this mean, perhaps, that people should be allowed to make their own decisions in the free market? That even if they take a job that rich college kids think is inhumane, they’re doing it for a reason — such as that it’s better than the alternative: unemployment?

Maybe these people who used to have jobs even thought of Wal-Mart as a positive force in their lives, a great opportunity.

Fascinating.