While visiting Washington DC, I noticed on certain streets infront of some buidling there would be a yellow-shirted protest where the protestors, almost all black people with one older white guy, would bang on a empty-paint can for a drum and march in a circle holding signs saying something like “DC Xalo Electrical Company hates workers” or something and this strike brought to you by “Union Mechanists Local #193”.
They would yell out slogans too–I’ve seen what might be the same group elsewhere, at a different time, doing the same thing.
Umm can someone explain this? Are those workers or hired protestors? Why is it only one racial group? Why the drums? Are they just identifying businesses and trying to shame them? If so, is it working?
They are hired protestors, typically homeless people earning 8 dollars an hour. They are banging the drum to annoy people in the building they are picketing. The older white guy is probably the guy from the union. If a building has the temerity to choose non-union labor to perform some renovation or construction in the building the are picketed by a union. The picketers are not always exclusively black, but DC has a very large black homeless population and marching in a circle holding signs for little pay is not a job that people with a whole lot of other options would take.
I have no idea whether it works or not.
So the actual machinists (not mechanists) are so busily employed that they don’t have time to do their own protesting, and are making so much money that they can afford to hire people to do it for them? Doesn’t sound like they have much to protest about.
I sort of agree with you. But what if we called it “advertising” or “lobbying” instead of “protesting.” Then it suddenly becomes perfectly normal activity . Why wouldn’t a group want to get the word out? Companies do it all the time.
Get what word out? That even though they’re all fully employed at high wages, they can’t stand to see anyone doing the same kind of work?
Advertising and lobbying are specific forms of communication best done by specialists. Labor protesting, on the other hand, is presumably aggrieved workers who want to be working for proper compensation showing, by their presence on the street, that they currently do not have the opportunity to work for proper compensation. It makes quite a mockery of it if said workers are indeed well employed and well compensated, to the point will they personally will not protest, but still feel the protest must go on. Doesn’t make their situation any better, just makes it harder for others. My reaction is screw 'em.
I don’t see that big of a difference between ENRON executives hiring a team to go to Washington to parade up and down the halls of congress and a group of machinests hiring some homeless people to parade up and down in front of a business. Both groups want something and they think it is worth hiring help to get it. It’s just a matter of scale IMO.
This might be veering into GD territory, but if the subject of the protest is that wages are below prevailing levels and benefits need to be improved, hiring protesters at minimum wage with no benefits can be seen in a poor light.
This is a subject of some debate within the labor movement, and some unions will not engage in this practice for just this reason.
What they are advertising is not their services, what they are advertising is the fact that if you hire their competition they will protest in front of your building.
but now I notice how the union workers pay their own protestors a measly minimum wage . . . market rates should apply then? At least when they employ, and are not themselves employed as tradesmen.
Well, its not like the picketers have a picketers union that the other unions are refusing to negotiate with. The main purpose of a union is to negotiate for higher wages for its members, I don’t think they’re ethically bound to pay above market wages to everyone they hire just out of the goodness of their hearts.
I’m more amused by the giant inflatable rat the SEIU sets up in front of hotels that hire non-union labor. I’ve seen it in several places in New York, in Boston, and in Washington.
Some times it is a matter of numbers. The machinest might not all be fully employed. Some times there are more places to picket them people to do the picketing.
The Daily Show did a piece on unions hiring protesters. Watch the union rep struggle for answers when asked if the picketers are being treated as fairly as the union wants its own workers to be.
Here’s the tag: Minimum wage, no benefits, 3-days per week. The union is nailed mis-treating the “temp workers” they hire to protest on behalf of their own members.