Union Outsources Picket Lines to the Homeless

Via NPR - All Things Considered -

About 30 people picket in front of a bank in downtown Washington, D.C., wearing big yellow signs that read: "Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters."

They shuffle about in circles, many wearing hooded sweatshirts and jeans. Their coats are draped over parking meters; their belongings sit in plastic grocery bags on the sidewalk. I ask a protester named Mike Hodge why he's there.

"We're protesting, we're protesting…" Then the energy leaves his voice and he concedes, "I don't know."

No wonder.

Hodge isn't a carpenter; he's a rent-a-picket.

The regional carpenters' union has hired Hodge for $8 an hour, essentially outsourcing protest work that union members traditionally do themselves. And many of the demonstrators are homeless people, according to people familiar with the union and its practices.

Rick Hatcher, who works as a monitor in a homeless shelter and was once an apprentice carpenter, says the union often recruits from shelters.

"Most of these people are very much unemployed," said Hatcher, as he watched the marchers in front of the bank. "They're homeless. Trust me. A majority of these people come from the shelters."

One of the marchers, Roger Washington, who lives in a shelter, recalled the carpenters descending on a meal for the homeless and hiring 140 people in one fell swoop.

The union hires them to work on what's called an "informational" picket.

The assignment: Protest a construction firm that the union says is paying below the prevailing wage to workers renovating the bank.

On this day, the protesters chant in a sluggish tone that sounds as if they recently woke up: "Low pay! No way! Fair pay! American way!"

In the past couple of years, the carpenters' union has hired the homeless to picket in Washington and other cities, according to news reports. The logic is economic. The union pays homeless people $8 an hour to picket so real carpenters can continue to make $24 an hour doing their jobs.

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Nows thats irony boys and girls....