To Protest Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Pickets

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Wall Street Journal

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

WASHINGTON—Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.

Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.


Jennifer Levitz/The Wall Street Journal

A protester pickets a building contractor outside the McPherson Building in Washington last month.


"For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.

So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he's grateful for the work, even though he's not sure why he's doing it. "I could care less," he says. "I am being paid to march around and sound off."



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704288204575362763101099660.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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FULL story at link.

I was a paid picket for a strike once. 1982. I couldn't find work after being fired illegally for union organizing in 1980. It was 10 weeks of work during the Reagan recession. I was glad to have it. But then I was one hell of a paid picket!

[timo]

1. flabbergasted

What a fabulous country we live in that unions don't even have to worry about doing their picketing....they have scabs do it!! thats progress folks real and serious progress!!!!

[Proletariatprincess]

2. wait wait wait! Let me set the record staight here.....

A scab is one who crosses a picket line to do the job of striking workers. Paying for picketing is not scabbing. Remember that the Labor movements mission is to raise the value of labor. Picketing is a job like any other. No one should work for free. Most union picketers get strike pay. Im happy to see the union help the unemployed this way. If it isn't a work stoppage, then it is better to keep the union members on the job and hire picketers.

[timo]

3. true that

I stand corrected, a scab is a crosser of the picket line, non union workers on the picket line, while i would agree hey its getting $ to some folks in need, I have to say, thats about some jacked up crap when the union folks cant be bothered to do their OWN work, sorta takes their street cred down to ZERO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Omaha Steve]

4. The union members are working full time at other locations

Do you really think the WSJ did a fair job on unions? This is a non-union work site. Picketing non union sites happens. I have volunteered picket duty for unions I don't belong to BTW.

[timo]

9. sorry

I just think it completely lessens the quality of the picket, to me its sorta like going to a pro ball game and they trot out some junior high b team and say well, they are wearing the pros jersey....I guess i am just not saavy in the ways of union stuff

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. If all of the union members are working elsewhere, then there must not be any available to work at

this site.

[doc03]

5. When I was on strike in 1995 I got paid a whopping $40

per week strike pay. When we were on strike the same union was paying a friends wife minimum wage to picket a non-union grocery store.

[SoCalNative]

6. They do this all of the time in L.A.

For mostly office buildings where a company is doing construction to a suite of offices before they move in or expand.

Oh sure...there will be one or 2 days when actual union members walk around in front of the building shout8ing about rats inside and the like, but the majority of the time it's just one or 2 people the unions hire from a non-union temp agency to sit on the sidewalk with a giant banners that says "Shame on XXX company" and the name of the union affiliation protesting.

[lonestarnot]

7. Sounds like someone needs to organize the picketers.

:evilgrin:

[davidinalameda]

15. is there a picket union?

[madmom]

8. When my SO worked for a union shop and they went on strike, they had to walk the

picket line at least one 8 hour day to get the said $40 a week strike pay.So that's what $5 an hour, great work if you can get it.:eyes:

[Freddie Stubbs]

13. But no one is on strike at this work site

They are protesting the use of nonunion labor.

[Psephos]

10. What's next, outsourcing to India? n/t

[stray cat]

11. Unions have become corporations with many of the same goals

[No Elephants]

16. I call bullshit. Squeezing the life out of workers is not a union goal.

Neither is killing them in coal mines.

[western mass]

12. Wait - is there a picketer's union?

or is this just another made-up "story" by that reliable right-wing mouthpiece, the WSJ?

If there was a unionized body of professional picketers, that would be another story.