Say Anything Blog

WASHINGTON -- You've heard the panhandler's common refrain, "Will work for food."

How about: "Will picket for food?"

In Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta and elsewhere in the country, union organizers are scouring shelters and recruiting homeless people to staff their picket lines, paying just above minimum wage and failing to provide health benefits.

The national carpenters' union, which broke from the AFL-CIO four years ago in a bitter dispute over organizing strategies and other issues, is hiring homeless people to stage noisy protests at nonunion construction sites.

"We're giving jobs to people who didn't have jobs, people who in some cases couldn't secure work," said George Eisner, head of the union's mid-Atlantic regional council in Baltimore.

Lets see...providing low-paying, benefit-free employment to people who need jobs. Sounds like...Wal-Mart!

Here's a wonderful quote from the kind, compassionate AFL-CIO:

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said he saw nothing wrong with unions hiring homeless people as pickets.

"The fact that the people demonstrating were not members of the union doesn't make much difference," Sweeney said. "What matters is that the carpenters working on the building had no health care and no pension."

You gotta love this heart-warming tid-bit too:

The union organizers allow the hired protesters to take two-minute breaks, Howards said, but dock their pay for the time off.

The hypocrisy is astounding. And this isn't the first time unions have pulled this stunt either.

I honestly don't have much of a problem with what the union is doing here, outside of the hypocrisy. After all, when you are an employer you have to keep costs low. That includes labor costs. In a free market, there really is no sense in paying people more than what they're willing to work for. If these people being hired to protest are satisfied with 20 hours per week, no benefits and just-above-minimum wages so be it. Why pay more?

Unless you're forced to pay more by thuggish labor unions threatening strikes and lawsuits. Which makes me wonder...if these part-time protesters tried to organize would the unions hiring them oppose that? Would they pay the inflated prices or would they stop hiring the protesters?

Because I think they'd probably stop hiring them.