Picket line in action at Prium's Wells Fargo

A roving correspondent shot these pics and sent them our way the other day.  The first fleeting thought we had was of some fringe group of radical empty-nesters protesting Prium for putting the 153 S. Wall condos on hold.  A closer look at their logo revealed carpenters or somebody upset at Prium for using non-union labor for a job.  Bummer...

• Wall St. Bonus Project [MetroSpokane]
• Prium Lofts - 90 Units of urban love [MetroSpokane]

Comments

[Silent Bahb]

Two guys and a banner? Wow, they must be low on budget.

[El Corte Ingles]

These same guys and same sign keep showing up at Rock Pointe as well...

[spokane86]

good for them!

[Dazzeetrader]

Adds over 30% to every construction job. Hard to swallow when a job's cost is so high because these types. Don't get me wrong, I like a fair wage for a fair job but this is one of the biggest impediments to building. Unions, L&I mandates....SHAME? on whom? Prium or Union/L& I wages? I wonder how this works. I was reading E WA scales a few weeks ago. $40/hour to replace light bulbs in a Government dominated building or for Union work. $15/hr in a non Gov, non union building. Guess who cuts themselves out of work. Doesn't seem right....or does it?

[Andy]

Shame?? - what about irony?

The widely known truth about these guys is that the large majority of picketers haven't ever swung a hammer in thier lives. The union hires them off the street, pays them a little better than min wage (and, oh yeah, no benefits) and sends them off to various work sites around the city. Generally the only union carpenters at the picket line are the token organizers there to reign their picketers in. Other union carpenters are out at jobs and too busy making union wages to picket so they have to hire what are quite often homeless shelter residents and petty criminals. Nothing wrong with hiring people that need work but it's disigenuous at the very least.

[Silent Bahb]

I can only speak to my own meager experience with unions when, ten years go, a union tried to come in to a manufacturing business I owned in part at the time. At the end of eight months of negotiation, and two illegal strikes where not a single employee stayed to picket (requiring the union to bring in hired picketers), the union ended up negotiating away our employees' sick time and some of their vacation benefits, all for a lousy nickel an hour. A nickel, that is, if you subtract their union dues from their pay.

I understand that unions were, at one time, greatly needed. I fear that over the last century many of them have morphed into the very thing that they originally sought to destroy.