You know the economy is good when workers are so busy that their unions have to hire temps to walk the picket line for them.

The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.

Many have arrived with large suitcases or bags holding their belongings, which they keep in sight. Several are smoking cigarettes. One works a crossword puzzle. Another bangs a tambourine, while several drum on large white buckets. Some of the men walking the line call out to passing women, “Hey, baby.” A few picketers gyrate and dance while chanting: “What do we want? Fair wages. When do we want them? Now.”

Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.

They’re hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.

Sort of makes you wonder how concerned they really are about unfair wages. Remember in the old days when workers actually had legitimate gripes, how they actually showed up to demonstrations? Not anymore. Now, when the union masters want to renegotiate (and take their cut, of course), they’ll just find someone less comfortably employed than themselves to do the picketing - and won’t pay them squat for it. A union spokesman calls it a “shift in paradigm,” as though this practice is revolutionizing picketing, and that it amounts to some sort of progress. If anything, this dispassionate attitude towards collective bargaining only lends further credibility to the suggestion that today’s unions are not out to get what’s fair, but to get what’s possible. In short, they’re greedy.

“Low wages” my potonkas. The MARCC even acknowledge on their website how good they have it, stating they “receive some of the best wages and benefits in the industry.” Clearly that calls for 8 picket lines a day!

It’s also disheartening to see that the union is fleecing so much money out of the laborers and employers both that it can afford these “hired feet” to do the grunt work for them. Like those dollars wouldn’t better serve the workers either in their pockets, or reinvested in the business by the employer.

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