"So working on a temp basis, as these homeless men are doing, does further the cause of carpenters employeed with a living wage , health benifits, and a retirement plan."

Yes, of course - it comes as as no surprise that a carpenter's union would be interested in benefits for union carpenters. But what about the cause of union picketers being employed with a living wage, health benefits, and a retirement plan?

My point is about the hypocrisy of labor unions effectively employing non-union employees without benefits to protest the employment of non-union employees without benefits. The union leaders' statements about how this is justifed undermine the very justifications for unions in the first place. And their labor practices - such as unpaid two minute breaks &refusing to hire these protestors for more than 20 hrs/week so that they don't have to provide health benefits - are precisely the sort of things that labor unions typically go ballistic about.

Let me make it clear that I have no problem with the union's actions per se, and agree with their arguments about why it's ok for them to hire homeless people as picketers. What I am pointing out is that for them to employ people in this way is hypocritical given the positions they take as a labor union. If any other employer used these employment practices, the union would throw a fit, but since a union itself is doing this, it's a-okay.

And it's not like I'm the only one with this take on what's happening. Remember the labor law professor interviewed in the article? He said the same thing: "They're basically doing what they're criticizing the employers for doing — getting the cheapest people to do the job," he said.

George the Union carpenter from Massachusetts makes an argument about how we shouldn't worry about picketers not getting benefits because it's not a full-time job or vocation. But the distinction between a full-time job and a part-time job is purely arbitrary. There's no reason someone couldn't work as a picketer full-time - it might even be a preferable job to some entry positions in the service industry. You may or may not be able to make a career out of it (which is really irrelevant), but it is certainly a job that could be worked full time. It may or may not be a temporary job (as are many carpentry jobs, in a certain sense, though I realize carpenters may work permanently for a certain consturction company, contractor, etc.), depending on how heavy &constant the demand is for picketers, but it certainly could be full-time while it lasts.

Meanwhile, let's keep in mind what these picketers are protesting. To quote John Sweeney: "What matters is that the carpenters working on the building had no health care and no pension." Now, we don't know whether these carpenters were working full-time, and we certainly don't know if each individual nonunion carpenter plans to make a career out of carpentry or was just working as a carpenter temporarily. But that doesn't stop the union from protesting.

And remember, Sweeney also says "Our hope is that those workers — that all workers — would have health benefits, but that is a bigger issue." Well, unions may not be able to effect change for all workers, but they can certainly start down that path by ensuring that all workers they themselves employ have health benefits. Instead, it seems like they just want these regulations for other people - and there's your hypocrisy.

For instance, instead of hiring half as many picketers and employing them full-time, the union has hired picketers part-time, in order to avoid paying them benefits. This is the sort of practice that unions are frequently up in arms about - demanding that business hire people for full-time positions and give them full benefits rather than hiring twice as many people at half-time and giving no one benefits.

Further, the union is paying them just above minimum wage, even though unions are constantly arguing that the minimum wage is nowhere near enough to live on. Instead, say the unions, employers should pay a so-called "living wage." But when the unions are doing the hiring, they conveniently forget about this "living wage" rhetoric. And the importance of this is amplified by the fact that these hired picketers aren't even being allowed to work full-time, increasing the gap between the weekly wage they earn and the "living wage" that unions so frequently advocate.

When the unions are hiring picketers, it seems like they forget all their rhetoric about a humane work place with decent working conditions, and the best defense of the 2-min break that George can offer is that it's not illegal. That's funny, because it would be illegal if union lobbyists got their way. And there's your hypocrisy again.

George argues that a " 'hired" picketer gets the same deal to walk the line as the union carpenter." Of course, I never argued about whether hired picketers were worse off than union picketers, and that was never my point. George obviously knows more about the ins &outs of this than I do, so I'll take him at his word that the actual hourly pay may be roughly the same. (Why hire homeless people and pay them close to the same amount as union picketers? Presumably because the opportunity cost is less.)

But in his earlier post, he noted "It is assumed that the union carpenter already is covered by health insurance, so to pay him a picket stipend with no health insurance for temporary work is what is happening." So, let's be clear on this. Union picketers still have their health insurance and any other benefits while they're picketing, even though the picketing itself doesn't get them credit towards those benefits. But are these hired picketers simply assumed to have health insurance and other benefits from another source as well? Of course not - the article says they're homeless, and presumably otherwise unemployed.

So at the end of the day, hired picketers are definitively NOT in the same shoes as union picketers, because they aren't covered by health insurance or other benefits. If they get sick from standing outside in the cold for hours on end and chanting or whatever, they've got nothing to fall back on. They're in just the same boat as the very nonunion carpenters that they're picketing. And there's your hypocrisy yet again.