Unions Hire Nonunion Pickets to Protest Hiring of Nonunion Workers
by PubliusFrom the Wall Street Journal:
In Atlanta, Timothy Baker, a 40-year-old unemployed warehouse worker, says his money-making strategy has been to walk picket lines for $8.50 an hour for the Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council. “It’s something to do until you find something better.”
While many big unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, frown on using nonmembers in picket lines, “we’re not at all ashamed,” says Jimmy Gibbs, director of special projects for the Southeastern Council. “We’re helping people who are in a difficult situation.”
For four hours at the recent Mid-Atlantic carpenters’ union protest in D.C., about 50 picketers-for-hire—some smoking cigarettes, reading the paper, or on their phones; a few leaning on canes—walked in a circle outside the McPherson Building. The place is home to a Starbucks, a spa and offices. “Some days, the beat is very good,” said James Harff, chief executive officer of Global Communicators LLC, a public-relations concern, tapping one foot in his second floor office. Other days, he can hardly hear himself think.
“Low Pay! Go away!” and “That Rat Gotta Go!” the union stand-ins chanted as other workers banged cow-bells and beat on a trio of empty plastic buckets. Eric Williams, a 70-year-old retiree who said he needs extra cash to buy groceries, wore a sign saying that Can-Am Contractors, a nonunion Maryland drywall and ceiling concern, “does not pay area standard wages & benefits.”
The target of the campaign is the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which is opening new classrooms on the second floor of the McPherson Building, and is having renovations done, including dry-walling by Can-Am.
“It is bizarre,” says Lynne Baker, a school spokeswoman, about the union’s hiring of nonunion picketers.
Inside, Juan Flores, Can-Am’s foreman, said his nonunionized workers are paid fairly. Of the protesters, he said, “I don’t blame them—they need the money, but they look like they are drunk or something.”
The union’s Mr. Garcia sees no conflict in a union that insists on union labor hiring nonunion people to protest the hiring of nonunion labor.
He says the pickets are not only about “union issues” but also about fair wages and benefits for American workers. By hiring the unemployed, “we are also giving back to the community a bit,” he says.
Read the whole thing here.
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13 Comments
hahahahahaha…are they smokin' their own sh!t????? they must be on those union mandated pot breaks….aaaaaw crap you just can't invent stuff like this…hahahahahaha…..ooooow shiney…….
The cup of hypocrisy continues to flow, or over flow.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He says the pickets are not only about “union issues” but also about fair wages and benefits for American workers."
Yeah that's great asshole, you're going to "fair wage and benefit" this country into oblivion. Also, I wonder, how much does Mr. Garcia make a year??
They cry that they are in support of the average worker,,,,when in fact UNION Leadership is only about maintaining THEIR grip on power and the exhorbidant salaries they take for their 'work'.
If I recall, another of the 'champions' of the under-priviledged, ACORN, also paid workers BELOW minimum wage.
Some may call this HYPOCRASY,,,,I just call them outright LIARS
Typical Union Leftist lieing !!!
The unions have raided our pocketbooks for far too long overpay for under work…
The problem is Union labor are mostly uneducated to the fact that the Union cares nothing about the Union Laboror the Union cares about the power of the Union!!! Sounds quite similar to the lying bast@rds in washington! These people are a blight on the american dream and way of life. Unions and politicians Liberal politicians mostly are the reason manufacturing jobs have all but left the United states. Look at Detroit that is the result of the Unions. A once vibrant city now a shell of nothing but destroyed buildings and people who are still ignorant of the fact that this was union caused.
Why not just hire a bunch of illegal aliens to do the picketing? You know, the jobs that the unions do not want to do.
“We’re helping people who are in a difficult situation.”
Oh, Puh-Leeze!
Hey, Union members, you guys paying the dues…….how do like paying some else's salary……sucks , huh?
Maybe you should stop giving all your money to those sleazy politicians, too.
I guess you have nothing better to spend your hard earned money on.
Rent-a-picket.
Picketing being done by a person (maybe even non-union) that's not a member of the union being harmed! American ingenuity having it's finest hour. BRILLIANT! /Sarkmark
The unions have become nothing but thugs, no better than the Crips or the Bloods. SEIU is the absolute worst, with the teacher's unions and public sector unions not far behind. The UAW, Teamsters, and AFL-CIO have long been known for Mafia ties, and ownership of the Democrat (socialist) party.
They should all be put under the jail with the RICO statute, but that will never happen under a corrupt Obama/Holder DOJ.
Its a long shot but more realistic, it would be better to cut all funding of everytype to all unions both public and private. Then all the union bosses and political benifactors should be jailed, and let the unions collapse after that. And then finally, have the former union workers get actual non-union jobs in the private market and let them work for themselves for once instead of a long dead institution.
Maybe I was wrong about realistic, but it still needs to happen either way.
I'm all for cutting off ALL funding for unions! Unions have ruined the steel and auto businesses in the US, costing tens of thousands of jobs. Unions have become evil, counterproductive vampires, that suck dues from the necks of workers, and spend it to ruin their employers, leaving them with no job.
WAKE UP, UNION WORKERS! You are being played, and your unions will throw you under the bus faster than Obama threw Jeremiah Wright under. If you put your employer out of business, there are NO MORE jobs! Look what great shape Detroit is in now.
You are a breath of fresh air, especially on a site where the air is one big smoke screen!
"Inside, Juan Flores, Can-Am’s foreman, said his nonunionized workers are paid fairly. Of the protesters, he said, “I don’t blame them—they need the money, but they look like they are drunk or something.”
That quote has to be worth something. I laughed out loud at that. I was driving around lost in the Carmel Valley area of San Diego and I came across more 'Shame on you' signs that the Unions put up out side companies. I believe the people holding up those signs are hired from a temp place. I never thought of that as unions hiring non-union workers to picket hiring non-union workers. Sometimes the obvious just escapes me
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