Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed. - George Burns

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Have years of overinflated wages and lengthy paid vacations made your body soft and weak like a wet sponge? Do you lack even the minimal physical endurance required to stuff your union’s foes into the trunk of a mafia limo? Well, you don’t do work at work, so why should you do work anywhere else?

The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They’re walking five-hour shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in Henderson-anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep suntans on their faces and arms-with two 15-minute breaks to run across the street and use the washroom at a gas station.

They’re not union members; they’re temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union-United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They’re making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it’s 104 F, and they’re protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.

“It don’t make no sense, does it?” says James Greer, the line foreman and the only one who pulls down $8 an hour, as he ambles down the sidewalk, picket sign on shoulder, sweaty hat over sweaty gray hair, spitting sunflower seeds. “We’re sacrificing for the people who work in there, and they don’t even know it.”

Maybe somebody should picket the UFCW’s working conditions. I’m guessing that the reason they have to do this for a living is because they aren’t bright enough to realize that they could get better jobs at Wal-Mart. This is hardly a new tactic: A similar UFCW picket last year here in Southern Illinois used hired thugs to accost customers at a local grocery. The grocery store’s crime against the working class? Well, the store treated their employees better than union stores treated their employees. UFCW eventually succeeded in driving them out of business and putting their staff out of work.

Yaay for labor.