You don’t hear about many business-minded folks operating out of Berkeley, California, but there are indeed some. One couple that makes lighting fixtures there, though, has been blinded by a thuggish union organizing drive by the honest-to-badness Socialists from the IWW (aka the Wobblies).

Here are the details of the ongoing picket, according to an opinion piece in the Daily Planet:

And the accusations from the picketers? Union busting, lockouts, ageism, toxic waste exposure, unsafe working conditions, unfair wages… you will see that these were all fabricated to support a plot which brings new meaning to the words “hostile takeover.” So, union busting. What would you do if several of your workers walked into a staff meeting one morning with a representative from the Industrial Workers of the World and announced that your store was now under their aegis? No discussion, no election, no communication with the National Labor Relations Board, no card check, no indication that the other employees wanted to join? What if they demanded a 100 percent wage increase? How about if they demanded that employment be unconditional—no performance requirements whatsoever? Amazingly, each of these things really happened.

That’s bad enough, but the author offers an important reminder that the very purpose of the IWW is to “organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, (and) abolish the wage system…”

Like many modern organizing campaigns, the Planet article’s author realizes: “Yes, the true intention of the pickets is not to improve their working situation; it is to take over Metro Lighting, or to drive them out of business trying.”