« On Americans' Consumption and Savings | Main | We Don't Make Anything Anymore» Russell Roberts
February 09, 2006
Getting More Done
Russell Roberts
This story really speaks for itself. Like my earlier post on ACORN, it's hard to imagine that this isn't a Saturday Night Live skit. It's actually from the Detroit News (HT: Rob Raffety). The point isn't the hypocrisy but the fundamental economic point that how much you do depends on what you have to pay to get it done:
Are unions crossing line with homeless pickets?
Stand-ins hired to make a ruckus outside nonunion sites lack rank-and-file benefits.
Lucia Graves / McClatchy Newspapers
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.
Ain't it the truth? The story continues by invoking the economic concept of opportunity cost—the true cost of something is what you give up by doing it:
The carpenters who belong to his union, Eisner explained, are gainfully employed. With homes and offices being built or renovated and real estate booming in many urban areas, he said, the union carpenters are too busy to join the picket lines.
"Work is good, and our members are working," Eisner said. "This is just the best thing for us to do at this point.
I couldn't make up the ending of the story:
The union organizers allow the hired protesters to take two-minute breaks, Howards said, but dock their pay for the time off.
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Comments
If you click on the poll, 70% of the respondents don't seem to have a problem with this either.
Posted by: Andrew | Feb 9, 2006 1:30:26 PM
These jokers are picketing where I work right now. We have only one portion of a major renovation that is nonunion. Once the picketing started, we put the work out for rebid to seven or eight union companies. None responded, yet they still picket us.
Posted by: Tom | Feb 9, 2006 2:16:27 PM
There was a story a while back about a union (the UFCW I think) protesting the construction of a Wal-Mart, and they similarly hired protesters at minimum wage, no benefits, no breaks, etc. Most of them ended up applying for better-paying jobs at the Wal-Mart store.
Posted by: dagny | Feb 9, 2006 2:49:01 PM
If they paid the homeless picketers more than minimum wage they could no longer afford to overpay their members and line the pockets of "pro-labor" politicians.
It appears that unions don't always ignore good economic sense!
Posted by: the Radical | Feb 9, 2006 4:40:51 PM
The worst I've ever been treated in my working life (and this includes stints at grocery stores in the deep South) was working as a temp and being assigned to a DC labor union. I was one of the temp company's better employees, so they put me on that project since the union was one of its better clients. Why? Because the generous benefits meant they usually had an absentee rate of around 1/4 to 1/3. So worked the same (or longer) hours than the permanent employees with a fraction of the pay and no benefits and no guarantee of employment, forced to ask to use the bathroom and excoriated if I didn't do things as fast as the full-time secretary who had been doing the same job for decades.
The kicker was listening to them discuss how to hide some of the new union president's compensation from the press.
Posted by: Sandy | Feb 9, 2006 8:42:16 PM
One wonders if the unions will learn an economic lesson when all the homeless unionize and the unions can no longer afford to pay them.
Posted by: DJB | Feb 9, 2006 8:58:45 PM
I was wondering if anyone can see the obvious similarities between unionism and fascism. In fact unionism in itself can not be achieved without some degree of fascism because afterall unionism is impossible without the socioeconomic controls coming from a centralized authority. I was wondering what the union line is on the idea of liberty. Are you only worthy of liberty, free will, and human rights if you are an aherent to the desired will of the union? Can freedom only be realized through the union? Maybe the union is freedom, I guess I need more time to ponder how unions make us all better off. I wish the United States had more unions because that would make our society as a whole much wealthier. I should probably quit rambling now and go away.
Posted by: John Pertz | Feb 9, 2006 9:44:22 PM
**** Because the generous benefits meant they usually had an absentee rate of around 1/4 to 1/3. ****
Related anecdote maybe some will appreciate. Last year I toured the BMW MINI plant in Oxford, Enlgand, where all the little buggers are made. The tour guide -- a crusty former foreman -- explained that new workers are hired as temps; at the end of a probationary period, if good, they are hired as employees.
He then showed as an absentee chart set up on the factory floor. You could follow it over time and clearly see that temps who all had excellent attendence, suddenly most of 'em became chronically sick starting their first week as full employees!
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