The National Labor Relations Board just found Wal-Mart guilty of illegally firing a union supporter, bribing employees, and discriminatorily refusing to protect union supporters from the harassment of their anti-union coworker, all in an effort to prevent workers from forming a union at its Kingman, AZ, store.

How is this decision a gift to Wal-Mart?  Because it was issued eight years after the organizing effort began—eight years after it could have had any impact on the union effort.  Thus Wal-Mart breaks the law, successfully squashes the union effort, benefits from the slow case-handling procedures at the NLRB, and merely has to pony up a little backpay and interest to the employee it fired.  It’s no wonder this country’s largest private employer has managed to stay entirely union-free.