So, I’ll join the general hysteria over the release of the latest Star Wars movie (which, once the lines get normal, I’ll be shelling out my $10.50 for…I can’t remember what it cost to see the first one 30 years ago). Back in the Reagan Era (which, as shocking as it may seem, feels somewhat tame relative to the current nightmare), one of the nominees for a Darth Vader-like figure would have been David Stockman. Now, that’s a bit harsh since he was a bit less foreboding personally (I think his get-up was mostly jacket-and-tie…can you imagine all that heavy black armor in a Washington, D.C. summer?) but his acts on behalf of his Master were pretty dastardly.

A short backgrounder: Stockman was the Administration’s budget director. And he famously compared what he was up to as a Trojan horse–tax cuts that were truly meant to destroy the government’s ability to pay for social spending (sound familiar?) by forcing spending cuts to maintain a balanced budget. All this was recounted in wonderful detail by William Greider in “The Education of David Stockman.”

Fast forward twenty years later. Stockman became an investor, starting a company called Heartland Industrial Partners. Its focus was particularly in buying up troubled industrial companies and turning them around. Among the companies bought was Collins & Aikman, and Stockman became its chairman and CEO. So, why is this remotely interesting?

Back in 2003, Stockman made a deal with the United Auto Workers, agreeing to a card-check process at any company that Stockman acquired (I should mention here that I’m a proud UAW member). Card-check, as many readers know, allows workers to literally sign a card that expresses support for the union; then, a neutral third party checks the cards, and, by previous agreement, if a majority indicate their support for the union, the employer recognizes the union and the parties sit down to bargain a contract over wages, benefits, job security and other issues. The beauty of the card check initiative is that it effectively eliminates the campaign of intimidation that employers routinely embark upon during a union organizing drive.

Back, then, as I recounted in a column about card check, Stockman told a UAW gathering at Solidarity House in Detroit, “If the workers want to be represented [through] a card check and we will be neutral in the process, let’s have those workers be represented…I don’t want to have a lot of distractions in three-year NLRB cases. Let’s make this plant productive, not three years from now after a lot of lawyers have wasted our money… It has nothing to do with ideology… This has to do with business, this has to do with jobs, this has to do with livelihood, this has to do with how we can work together as management and employees.”

There were two successful card checks at Collins and Aikman, for 450 workers at a Columbia, Missouri plant in October 2003 andfor more than 200 workers at a Port Huron, Michigan plant in December 2003. For Stockman this was a hard-headed business decision: he realized that there was nothing good in going to war against his workers who wanted a union. It would leave him with a damaged work environment, hardly a way to try to make money.

Why this story today? Well, Collins & Aikman announced this week that it would most likely file for bankruptcy. And Stockman resigned from the company.

Now, hold on: that the company is in bankruptcy doesn’t mean those jobs are lost. Those particular operations may or may not still be viable once the reorganization is done. But, whatever happens, the workers there are much better off having a union contract than not having one.

And card check can just as easily be followed by some expansion at a company. The UAW also won card checks at two Freightliner plants in North Caroline in January 2003–in a right-to-work state where it’s supposed to be impossible to organize. Not only did it win once the employer agreed to stay neutral, but the UAW got a first contract in both plants which includes a wage increase and reduces the amount workers are paying for health care–that almost never happens these days.

But here’s the kicker: Since those plants became UAW represented, the company has added jobs, in big numbers. As I understand it, there were about 2,500 people when the plants first became union, and now the numbers are over 4,000.

So, I never thought I’d say it but here’s to David Stockman: for realizing that making money also means not brutalizing your workers and allowing them the basic American freedom of the right to choose who should speak for them at work.