"There goes my rickshaw business."
Posted on 07/24/2007 6:52:47 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
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...
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....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I wonder what the benefits were like. Did they have a collective bargaining agreement? What is the grievance procedure? Pensions? Sick leave? Okay, they protest, but does their contract permit them to demonstrate, march, or riot? Or does that have to handled by journeymen? Or another "brotherhood?"
At least they didn’t hire illegal aliens.
Is $8 per hour union scale for picketing? It seems kind of low. And since these guys aren't really union members isn't that kind of like hiring "scab workers". Union hypocrisy at its finest.
Scabs!!
haha. that is because all the illegals are working for them that day.
What is a "transnational" house?
We don’t know that.
Transitional houses are for people who have just gotten out of prison or jail.
RIF.
"There goes my rickshaw business."
I loved the social worker type who talked about them being people who were "down on their luck." If you spend most of your day stoned on a variety of legal and illegal substances, you are not likely to have much in the way of "luck." Most of them have brains that are so fried by substance abuse that they wouldn't know which end of a hammer to hit the nail with. But they are out there protecting the "rights" of union carpenters (most of whom, from what I can tell walking and driving past construction sites, seem to be newly arrived Hispanics). This is quite the social compact!
Yes, and in DC, lobbyists hire them as place keepers in waiting lines for congressional hearings, so the morning of a big hearing, you see them lined up inside and outside the congressional office buildings. Many of them are obviously high on something, and without exception they are hygienically challenged.
Makes a lot of sense. I’ve walked past several of these protests. Let’s just say the folks don’t look like carpenters.
The only benefits these homeless picketers get from the union can be found here:
Lots of free refreshments!
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