In my town, you will see periodically protestors standing in front of a business with a large banner on a PVC tubing frame. The banner will be customized and say “Shame on ABC Company - Labor Dispute” or ABC Company Engages in Unfair Labor Practices". The company name will change, but these protests are against new grocery stores, doctors offices, a church, bank, credit union, etc. The only thing that they have in common is that the businesses recently had new construction or tenant remodeling done.
I talked to a couple of the businesses and discovered what the phenomena was. The union doing the protesting represents employees of a local sheet rocking contractor. When each of these businesses were doing their construction or remodeling, they solicited bids from various contractors. This one particular contractor is the only one in town that is unionized, if his firm doesn’t win the bid, then the union will picket the business.
On top of this perceived extortion, the picketers are not even employees of the contractor. They are paid protestors paid by the union. I asked one the protestors once what they were protesting. He said he didn’t know he was being paid by the hour to stand out there.
The only motivation I can see for the union protesting is to create some sort of extortion to get the local businesses to hire the unionized contractor. But maybe there is something else.
You say extortion; they say raise awareness. Both answers are true - people are allowed to state their claim in the public arena and the public gets to make decisions based on their interpretation.
What’s wrong with letting the public know that a labor force isn’t unionized?
What’s wrong with hiring the lowest price bidder for a job?
That’s one of the most hilariously ironic things about union protests. More often than not, the union will be protesting for better wages and better benefits – but will hire a bunch of unemployed schlubs at minumum wage, with no benefits, to stand out there doing the actual protesting.
Here’s a hilarious 2010 segment from The Daily Show about a United Food and Commercial Workers protest of Walmart’s labor practices in Las Vegas. The protesters for the UFCW are non-union minimum wage employees.
They were doing that around here for a while. It looked like a labor dispute, but it actually had something to do with what some sub-contractor did for some previous work (sometimes years earlier) and had no connection with the employees.
I tend to support unions, but this was just asinine and made unions look bad (worse) in an area where they weren’t to well respected. One local restaurant started putting up countering signs to show the dispute wasn’t actually with them.
There’s a country club a few miles up the road. I’m guessing they’re doing some non-union construction because on a number of days there have been a bunch of lawn signs, “SHAME” & “Boycott <Club Name>”. Uhhh, I might be willing to be sympathetic if you gave me some clue why they are shameful & should be boycotted. None of the signs say anything about using non-union labor (though this is what I suspect they are about) nor is there a website to get more info. :smack:
I don’t play golf but I’m half tempted to join just because of these goon-ion guys.
It sounds like they’re overall objective would be either a stupid urge of vengeance for not being hired, or trying to instill a feeling of fear in future contracting bids by other businesses in the area of what happens to thems what’s don’t contracts to thems whats doing the mudslinging.