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Union leader opposes would-be Eagle Scout's path-clearing project
November 16, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Yes we can!
Posted by: MidtownCoog | Nov 16, 2009 8:38:03 AM
A Union protesting a young man's efforts to become a better person.
That says it all.
Posted by: RockyMtnMac | Nov 16, 2009 8:54:43 AM
'filing a grievance' is the kind of typical knuckle dragging Union goon talk which usually only occurs over something so incredibly petty that a 6 year old would be ashamed to act that way. These kinds of stories do nothing but harm Unions. Believe it. This jackass is probably a management plant.
Posted by: sometimesilie | Nov 16, 2009 8:56:54 AM
Wait, who am I supposed to hate, the union leader or the scouts. I hate it when I gots all this righteous indignation and unclear targets. hate.
Posted by: Rev JSH | Nov 16, 2009 8:58:52 AM
"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails." Okay, Mr. Union President, after you "look into" him, what then? His house burns? His dog mysteriously dies? What did you mean by that comment to the city council?
Posted by: Sheila | Nov 16, 2009 9:15:56 AM
Unions stopped being a force for good a longtime ago. It's no longer collective bargaining, but legal extortion.
Posted by: joe | Nov 16, 2009 9:30:58 AM
I live in a right-to-work state (translation: Good luck with your unions, bud), so I don't understand a lot of what was in this article. I thought the idea of a grievance was to prevent non-union labor from being paid to do the work.
Regardless of whether or not it's an Eagle Scout, shouldn't any volunteer be able to do the work, so long as they don't receive compensation?
Posted by: jj2 | Nov 16, 2009 9:31:57 AM
Fu'kin' scabs! Someone needs to teach that kid a lesson.
Posted by: BallstotheWall | Nov 16, 2009 9:38:01 AM
VOTE UNIONS NO
Posted by: AngrySockMonkey | Nov 16, 2009 9:55:31 AM
He talks like a goomba from the Sopranos. What central casting call for a thug did this guy crawl out of? I've got a special hatred for unions and their ilk. Back when I was working at Cape Canaveral I had a grievance filed against me for reapplying a wire nut that had fallen off a join. After an unbelievable hearing right out of Kafka, it was decided that the grievance was without merit (something about the size of the job being small enough to fall under the radar of union rules). Then my rental car surprisingly gets both rearview mirrors smashed off. Swell guys. Pillars of community and all that.
Posted by: Drake Timbershaft | Nov 16, 2009 10:05:50 AM
The scouts are being used to build the path that workers were supposed to do in the first place. Imagine it being one of your jobs that got laid off. Won't you be pissed about losing all that money? The city says Why pay someone to do the job, when we can get it for free.
Posted by: Jack B | Nov 16, 2009 10:05:59 AM
Or, JAck, the path doesn't get built EVER because the city does not have the money to pay some Union twit $40 an hour to 'build' what a boy scout can do for FREE.
Posted by: sometimesilie | Nov 16, 2009 10:08:47 AM
I grew up in Allentown.
that city is a mess.
Posted by: tinybaubles | Nov 16, 2009 10:18:06 AM
Or, Jack, if the Union had not been taking an extra long time (mandatory extra beaks, extra days off, extra safety meetings (complete with meals), and extra insurance) to go along with the extra wages, the path would have been done, on budget a long time ago, and this would not be an issue...
Ahh, the Union. You win!
Posted by: RockyMtnMac | Nov 16, 2009 10:21:02 AM
this is a no win situation. the union guy has to speak up for the laid off mothers and fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, sisters, who are losing jobs that feed themselves and their families. the boy scout is trying to do a good deed for free. the city is trying to save money for a needed project.
which of you wouldn't try to do the same in someone else's shoes.
Posted by: union scab buster | Nov 16, 2009 10:25:29 AM
It's not necessarily a no-win situation. One of my neighbors was laid off last year and had been unable to get a job for many months. He decided to answer the call for volunteers to help with a local Eagle Scout project (urban gardens on ugly, trashy, vacant lots).
While working, he struck up a conversation with another volunteer - who was hiring for his business. Guess who got a job that day? Kharma can be a wonderful thing.
Or it can bite you squarely on the rear. Perhaps I'm a bit jaded because the Union here protects the drunks and the lazy instead of the hard workers, but you get what you get depending on what you give.
Posted by: behindbj | Nov 16, 2009 10:37:34 AM
Drake- in what quote does the union rep "talk like a goomba." I read the entire article and there's nothing weird about the way his words are written.
Here's a quote:
"In the spirit of the holiday, we decided to let that go," Balzano said.
the only "goomba" thing in the article is that the dude's Italian.
See my wife comes from an Italian neighborhood and 95% of the families I met there value hard physical work there above all else- they're firefighters, cops, plumbers, etc. The parents let the kids drop out of high school and reward them by paying for union plumbing apprenticeships. It's a case where the lack of love of education has created this generation of smart skilled manual laborers. It's like hillbillies joining the Army and Marines- the kids seem to get more respect for that than if they toughed it out in college.
Ok, so I read the article and it's pretty clear that the union rep is just trying to get some negotiating juice with the Mayor. I don't see ANY of the weird prejudices that people are trying to bring to this story present in this story at all. Someone enlighten me to what I missed.
Posted by: DCer | Nov 16, 2009 10:48:30 AM
Smart, skilled manual laborers and educated professionals are both needed by society, and both deserve equal respect. Equal. And what this kid did deserves respect.
Posted by: LimeGreenLizard | Nov 16, 2009 11:11:50 AM
@ DCer
"We decided to let that go" comes across as a bit of a warning.
Unions have created a bias against themselves by, oh say, tossing malatov cocktails through peoples windows, blowing up cars, and burning down houses when they chose to "not let it go".. you can see where the misunderstandings come in to play. (Like when you misunderstand the union and they break your arm so that you won't misunderstand them again.)
Posted by: RockyMtnMac | Nov 16, 2009 11:12:25 AM
Speaking of "In the spirit of the holiday, we decided to let that go" ...
Did anyone else find it odd that they decided to let a very legitimate, greivable incident (outsourcing work to a contracter for something that was definitely a union job) go without making a fuss?
And then they take a borderline situation (most contracts don't prohibit volunteer work specifically, and it's almost impossible to enforce even if they do) and make a huge, and very embarrassing, stink about it!
Posted by: Tank | Nov 16, 2009 11:16:09 AM
I've *had* to enroll in two separate Unions to work two separate jobs in the past 10 years. My opinion of Unions prior to that was very high- good guys fighting for honest wages for working people. I no longer have that opinion of Unions, based on my own real world experience. Someone elses experience may have paint very different picture, but I don't like them. That's not a "weird prejudice".
My favorite anecdote is when a buddy of mine's Union was participating in a scheduled protest over his employer's refusal to offer what he saw as a fair contract. His Union president was booked to speak at his rally and showed up in a mutherfvking limousine.
Posted by: sometimesilie | Nov 16, 2009 11:29:06 AM
Interesting snippet from one of my local blogs. Relevant here, because this Union guy is complaining about not getting a PUBLIC contract. You guys feel like YOUR taxes need to be any higher?
"Who do the words “union members” bring to mind? United Auto Workers building cars in Detroit? Teamsters truckers hauling freight? Steel workers in Pennsylvania?
Not any more. Newly released numbers show that the actual face of today’s union movement is the teller at your local Department of Motorized Vehicles.
Preliminary estimates of union membership this year show that most union members now work for the government. The overall unionization rate between January and September 2009 stood at 12.4%, unchanged from last year. However, this difference masks a large difference between unions in the private and public sectors.
Union membership has fallen to 7.3% of private sector workers – the lowest rate since Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. But it is a completely different story in the public sector: 37.6% of government employees belong to unions, up almost a percentage point since last year. Those 7.9 million unionized government employees are 51% of all union members nationwide. Most union members today now work for Uncle Sam.
So when unions start lobbying, taxpayers should hold onto their wallet. Government employees don’t strike to get higher wages from a private business – they strike to get higher wages from you. Their pay is funded through your tax dollars. For government employee union members to get more your taxes need to go up. So that is what unions now lobby for."
Posted by: sometimesilie | Nov 16, 2009 11:47:08 AM
DCer, those you airily dismiss as "hillbillies" often join the military in order to afford to go to college later.
Posted by: Sheila | Nov 16, 2009 11:55:19 AM
Perhaps all of you who hate unions would like to dig coal in West Virgina for ten cents a day?
I too live in a "right-to-work" state, so unions are defiantly unloved here. However, they did a lot of wonderful things, especially when big labor would send in hired gunmen, thugs, spies and killers.
Oh, yes, show me a cop, and I will show you a union member.
Posted by: johnjohn | Nov 16, 2009 11:59:17 AM
johnjohn, you are talking about stuff that happened a long time ago when they were not only a very good idea, but a *necessity*.
Show me someone who makes 10 cents a day. Oh wait, I know, Mexico! Cambodia! Those are the people who need to Unionize, and the companies who extort those people- especially those based in America- are the ones who need to be taken in hand.
Every transaction I see with Unions today usually hits the working class. We just had a transit strike by the bus and sub operators and a bunch of working stiffs making 8$ an hour were getting screwed by a bunch of spoiled overpaid, publicly subsidized Union jackasses who *already* make 50,000+ a year, get 70% salary on pension from retiring and pay 1% a year for comprehensive health plans that go so far as to include ED drugs. They struck at 3 am, Monday morning because of a 1% difference in pension contributions in year 3 of their 5 year contract.
What they did was unconscionable and did more to spoil public-Union relations than anyone since the Pinkertons who were cracking down on your 10-cent a day coal workers all those decades ago.
Posted by: sometimesilie | Nov 16, 2009 12:14:18 PM
