There has been some bemused comment on the left about how strange this story is:
“For a lot of our members, it’s really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else,” explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.
So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he’s grateful for the work, even though he’s not sure why he’s doing it. “I could care less,” he says. “I am being paid to march around and sound off.”
Trades Unions exist to generate privileged conditions for their members at the expense of consumers and other workers. I commented to that effect on Harry’s Place and was told by Gene that:
the goal is to organize as many workers in a field as possible, so that union workers can’t be undercut by cheaper non-union workers. Unfortunately in many cases, those organizing efforts are undercut by employer intimidation, firings, lax enforcement of labor laws, etc.
I remember when the TUC conference was televised and widely watched, in the 1970s. I also remember seeing Joe Gormley, during one conference, explain to the London sewer workers’ union, whatever it was at that time, that there was no point their asking for a 40% pay rise (their members were very badly paid) because they didn’t have the industrial muscle to get it, whereas the miners did and would insist that their pay raises matched the highest awarded to any other workers in the public sector (the nationalised mines workers were very well paid at the time).
There wasn’t the money to increase the miners’ pay by 40% so, said Gormley, the sewer workers should forget it.
