« How much better is local food for the environment? | Main | My goodness, many of you are jumping on David Brooks »
Markets in everything, Eugene Debs edition
We again see life imitating art:
The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.
Many have arrived with large suitcases or bags holding their belongings, which they keep in sight. Several are smoking cigarettes. One works a crossword puzzle. Another bangs a tambourine, while several drum on large white buckets. Some of the men walking the line call out to passing women, "Hey, baby." A few picketers gyrate and dance while chanting: "What do we want? Fair wages. When do we want them? Now."
Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.
They're hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.
"It's about the cash," said Tina Shaw, 44, who lives in a House of Ruth women's shelter and has walked the line at various sites. "We're against low wages, but I'm here for the cash."
Carpenters locals across the country are outsourcing their picket lines, hiring the homeless, students, retirees and day laborers to get their message across. Larry Hujo, a spokesman for the Indiana-Kentucky Regional Council of Carpenters, calls it a "shift in the paradigm" of picketing.
Political groups also are tapping into local homeless shelters for temps.
One resident of the Community for Creative Non-Violence shelter earns $30 a day holding a sign outside a Metro stop protesting nuclear war. In 2004, residents of at least 10 shelters were paid to collect signatures on petitions in favor of legalized gambling. Residents call this type of work "lobbying."
The carpenters union is one of the most active picketers in the District, routinely staging as many as eight picket lines a day at buildings where construction or renovation work is being done without union labor.
Supporters of the practice consider it a creative tactic in an era of declining union membership and clout. But critics say the reliance on nonunion members -- who are paid $1 above minimum wage and receive no benefits -- diminishes the impact and undercuts a principle established over decades of union struggles.
Here is the story, and thanks to Scott Rogers for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 25, 2007 at 07:01 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Looks like the union is outsourcing the job of picketing to take advantage of comparative advantage. Seems win-win to me.
Posted by: Acad Ronin at Jul 25, 2007 7:20:40 AM
No benefits? Another wage slave exploited! Looks like the picketers need to form a union.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 25, 2007 8:19:51 AM
8 bucks an hour? I wouldnt get out of bed for 8 bucks an hour. They really need to unionize.
Posted by: Jacob at Jul 25, 2007 8:34:03 AM
They are out in front of the walgreens on my commute almost everyday. The sign says "Walgreen discriminates" but their real "crime" is they hire non-union carpenters (NE council of carpenter's is the "sponsor"). I pulled up their website to see how they discriminate, but mostly saw stories about hiring non-union carpenters. A pretty calous playing of the race card (the store is in a lower income area). Good for Walgreens for not caving. I figured they were retired carpenters, but perhaps the picketters are scabs themselves.
Posted by: AnotherDave at Jul 25, 2007 8:39:22 AM
These thugs truly know no limit.
Did you see this union story?
Unions and Card Checks
Posted by: Speedmaster at Jul 25, 2007 8:52:31 AM
@Jacob: "getting out of bed for 8 bucks an hour" is not a problem for people in shelters. They pretty much have to be out anyway. What's the harm in getting out with a purpose (8 bucks an hour)?
Posted by: HeShootsAndScores at Jul 25, 2007 9:57:11 AM
@Jacob: "getting out of bed for 8 bucks an hour" is not a problem for people in shelters. They pretty much have to be out anyway. What's the harm in getting out with a purpose (8 bucks an hour)?
Posted by: HeShootsAndScores at Jul 25, 2007 9:57:39 AM
@Jacob: "getting out of bed for 8 bucks an hour" is not a problem for people in shelters. They pretty much have to be out anyway. What's the harm in getting out with a purpose (8 bucks an hour)?
Posted by: HeShootsAndScores at Jul 25, 2007 9:57:46 AM
I notice them picketing all over Atlanta, they always looked a bit to ragged to be actual workers.
Posted by: Matthew Campbell at Jul 25, 2007 10:18:56 AM
How is hiring non-union carpenters any morally different from hiring temporary workers to picket? Am I missing something here?
Posted by: Christina at Jul 25, 2007 10:26:56 AM
This is very interesting—when left-leaning unions hire unemployed shelter residents to picket a non-union job site and the “Post” prints a story about it the story gets picked up by an intellectual blog where everyone yawns and says, “so what”.
However last year when it’s revealed that the Republican Party hired unemployed shelter residents to attend rallys in support of Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich’s re-election campaign (unsuccessful as it turned out) the MSM and Left were incensed that the poor were being exploited and it became a major issue. That wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, “The Baltimore Sun” leading the charge.
The hypocrisy of the left knows no boundaries.
Posted by: Dave Richardson at Jul 25, 2007 10:33:15 AM
Why aren't the unions paying their employees union wages? That is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Jul 25, 2007 10:54:00 AM
You shouldn't let your visceral dislike of unions cloud your vision.
First, picket lines have always been manned by a variety of people. Historically this has included the wives and children of workers as well as sympathizers. On the other side owners hired Pinkerton men to break up strikes and disrupt picket lines. Sometimes these people mingled with scabs and appeared to be outraged workers just trying to get into the plant, but not always.
Second, walking a picket line does not make the best use of the worker's talents. A striker still needs an income and if he can find work elsewhere while withholding it from the firm where he is striking he will be able to feed his family. It will also put less of a burden on the union's financial resources as well. So this has a practical motivation as well.
Third, those being paid to walk the picket line are currently unemployed, most have few marketable skills so this is something they can do. They are being paid well above the national minimum wage for unskilled work. Would you prefer that they stay on the dole?
It's not hypocrisy to assign tasks in a way that maximizes economic efficiency. You don't expect the CEO to clean the toilets, so why should highly skilled craftsmen perform menial work?
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Jul 25, 2007 11:49:25 AM
More like life imitates life:
The United Food and Commercial Workers wants to call public attention to the crying scandal of a Wal-Mart grocery in Henderson, Nevada's starting workers at $6.75 an hour. So what does it do? It hires temp workers at $6/hour with no benefits to walk a picket line in 104-degree heat in front of the air-conditioned store. Picketer Sal Rivera, as it happens, used to work at Wal-Mart, where he made $8.63 an hour, a good deal above what the union paid him to picket; he'd consider re-applying.
The original, September 2005 story at the Las Vegas Weekly appears to be long gone.
Posted by: Bob Montgomery at Jul 25, 2007 12:11:52 PM
robertdfeinman: Good points, all. But then, all of that also explains why the employer doesn't
want to hire union labor in the first place.
Christina: The difference is that hiring non-union labor is consistent with the employer's professed
beliefs, while hiring picketers blatantly violates several of *their* employers' professed beliefs.
Posted by: Person at Jul 25, 2007 12:32:53 PM
happyjuggler0,
In Oregon, the SEIU local that represents public employees has a unionized workforce, repesented by CWA. The hilarious thing is, that group has just as many gripes about "management" (their SEIU bosses) as anyplace else.
On the left side of their website is "record number of grievances have been filed". I think that just about says it all.
SEIU=Service Employees International Union
CWA=Communications Workers of America
Posted by: Andrew at Jul 25, 2007 12:33:51 PM
You miss the point that the carpenter's union represents "carpenters" (and whoever else they have brought in through the years).
People who man picket lines don't belong to this trade, so there is no a priori reason why they should belong to this union. Many craft unions have strict rules about what sorts of skills they will represent. That's why many firms have to deal with several unions.
Look at Hollywood. The directors don't belong to the same union as the screen writers or the actors. Different interests, different representatives.
Now if there are enough "professional" picket line workers they are free to join a union or form one of their own. One that represents their needs. You also understand that in the real world walking a picket line is usually short term work.
The fact that conditional workers don't have union representation is the way things work in this country. Even unions have to operate within the strictures of our society. That some unions are imperfect is also true, so what. Show me a firm that is perfect and that doesn't have workers unhappy with conditions.
The amazing thing is that probably 95% of those in the work force are just plain employees. They work because they have to. No work, no food. Yet the idea that they might be better off combining their negotiating skills is seen as demeaning. Don't fool yourselves, unless you can live without working you are as much a wage slave as any blue collar worker.
Not recognizing one's own self-interests is one of the major achievements of the laissez faire political philosophy which has been dominant for the past 40 years. Your interests are not the same as the owners/managers of enterprises. This goes for academics and pundits as well. (Pundits married to billionaires excepted.)
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Jul 25, 2007 12:50:09 PM
In my first micro class we learned to be unhappy about lawyers, advertisers and lobbyists because they're so often making money not by producing anything useful, but by arguing over the allocation of resources already present. This is the same ugly phenomenon. Those homeless people might have other low-paying but productive jobs they could take. Even if they don't, they could be enjoying their leisure time. Smoking crack or whatever. Such a waste.
Posted by: Jeff Brown at Jul 25, 2007 12:58:55 PM
robertdfeinman: No libertarian objects to forming a union. What they object to is when, upon being replaced
with non-union labor, the union then violates the employer's property rights and forces him to hire them by law.
And if your post was directed at me, I'm still figuring out what it was responding to.
Posted by: Person at Jul 25, 2007 1:02:10 PM
I think picketing in general is terrible, but I can't think of a way to publicly show this.
Posted by: sourcreamus at Jul 25, 2007 1:15:16 PM
Dave,
Do you think this is a leftist blog?
Posted by: josh at Jul 25, 2007 1:31:09 PM
sourcreamus,
A boycott!!
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 25, 2007 1:32:53 PM
I nominate the robertdfeinman comment at 11:45 a.m. as the most ironic of the year.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 25, 2007 1:34:23 PM
Just note that if your remark contains a person's name and that you are making disparaging comments about them you leave yourself open to the belief that you have nothing substantive to add to the discussion.
If you don't agree with my points then present counter arguments. If you can't perhaps you should examine your understanding of the issues a little more deeply. Ad hominem attacks and casual dismissal of ideas are inadequate.
I find this happens more on the right than on the left, but not exclusively. The latest flap over David Brooks is a good example of a left transgression. However many of the comments have cited data to support their arguments, I don't see the same thing happening in this discussion.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Jul 25, 2007 1:48:35 PM
RobertdFeinman,
I found nothing objectionable to the contents of the comment, however, the irony of it is pretty strong in that it is a defense of a union hiring non-union labor. Do you really not see this?
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 25, 2007 2:05:55 PM
