Not at all ashamed

When news is funnier than satire

— YOU MIGHT think this story is a joke, Dear Reader. Something straight out of the satirical newspaper, The Onion. Right next to the stories headlined “White House Jester Beheaded for Making Fun of Soaring National Debt” and “Ritalin Gummies Unveiled.”

But this story comes from an obstensibly serious journal. The Wall Street one.

Unions, it seems, are hiring folks to do their protesting for them. And they’re not paying union wages.

At this point we should say something like: We Wish We Were Kidding. But that’d be less than truthful. We don’t wish we were kidding.

This is grist you just can’t buy. Some editorials write themselves.

It turns out one of the unions hiring folks off the street to protest is the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters. They’re hiring, and paying only minimum wage, if you’ll march and chant outside the McPherson Building, an office complex in Washington, D.C.

Why would a union need to hire pickets? The union’s vice president for picketing, or whatever his official title is, one Vincente Garcia, can explain it: “For a lot of our members, it’s really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else.”

In all the annals of American protest, we can’t remember another instance of parking problems being cited as a reason why the workers aren’t rebelling this year.

It gets funnier:

The carpenters’ union is hiring nonunion labor to picket a company the union suspects is . . . hiring non-union labor.

That’s right. The Mid-Atl. Regional C. of C. is upset because there’s work being done in this office complex by nonunion labor. And now the work of picketing is being handled the same way.

Will another union come along to protest the Mid-Atl. folks’ hiring nonunion labor to protest the use of nonunion labor?

And will that second union hire nonunion folks at minimum wage to protest their union brothers’ unfair hiring practices? This is getting to be like those facing mirrors in barbershops that reflect each other from here to eternity. The head spins. And the keyboard sizzles.

To add insult to irony, reporters interviewed one of the protesters outside that awful, awful office complex that doesn’t hire union workers. One man said he appreciated the paycheck, but really wasn’t sure what he was protesting: “I could care less,” he said-with more candor than the people paying him surely expected. “I am being paid to march around and sound off.”

Sounds like he’d fit in a union just fine. The Mid-Atl. folks have 150 protests going on in D.C. and Baltimore every day. So they need the feet and fulminations.

In Atlanta, the Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council is paying folks $8.50 an hour to walk picket lines. A lot of union workers might not even cross the street for $8.50 an hour. But that’s probably the point. The union, like so many other outfits these days, has to think of its budget.

As for the marchers, they’re nothing if not upwardly bound. Or as one marcher told the press: “It’s something to do until you find something better.”

Not exactly Hell, No, We Won’t Go. But very American. Isn’t every American always looking for a better gig? The way every waiter off Broadway is an actor waiting to be discovered.

“We’re not at all ashamed,” said Jimmy Gibbs, director of, ahem, “special projects” at the Southeastern Council. “We’re helping people who are in a difficult situation.”

That part is true. The unemployed may have to take what they can get, even a minimum-wage job, to keep thelights on and food on the table. Nobody should blame them for that. But you’d think even union bosses would have enough shame, or just enough of a sense of irony, not to pull a stunt like this.

Next on the editorial page’s never ending hunt for grist: A news story about PETA’s hiring hunters to protest at McDonald’s.

Editorial, Pages 12 on 07/20/2010

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