The consultant explained that the workers' compliance was voluntary. (compliance: adherence, conformity, observance) Then a domineering foreman stood over the first four signatories. (domineering: overbearing, autocratic, dictatorial) A fifth, a woman usually so complaisant that her friends teased her, left the paper unsigned. (complaisant: accommodating, obliging, agreeable) The consultant tried to placate her with a sweeter pen. (placate: appease, mollify, pacify)
She had no objection to the proposal. She objected to an expedient that made a vote look unanimous. (expedient: device, workaround, means) Genuine dissent would be costly under the foreman's gaze. (dissent: disagreement, opposition, objection) The process would alienate the very people whose trust was paramount. (alienate: estrange, disaffect, isolate; paramount: overriding, foremost, supreme) Would they accept slips folded into a box?
The foreman was the first to use one. The proposal passed by a single vote. Four workers had changed their minds in private, he confessed afterward. One of them was himself. The woman returned the consultant's pen and kept the empty box for next month's meeting.