Laborers union members -- and their famous rat -- picket the
Plainfield Senior Center's construction site. (Click to enlarge.)
The giant rat could mean only one thing: Non-union labor is being used to build Plainfield's new Senior Center.
Driving down Front Street from the funeral of Democratic stalwart Irene Leath, where Jerry Green had just delivered a eulogy, New Jersey's most famous balloon was noticeable from two blocks away as laborers' union workers picketed the Dornoch construction site.
In a Democratic town -- on a project where the developer got the property from the Union County Improvement Authority (UCIA), whose executive director Charlotte DeFilippo is the chair of the Union County Democratic Committee; and where the City's legislative representative is Plainfield Democratic City Committee chair Jerry Green -- how could this happen?
Democrats and trade unions go together like 'love and marriage', as the old song says.
So, how did our Democratic leaders let this happen?
What difference does it make if they are sure to place the union label on all their printed materials if, when push comes to shove, they don't see to it that union workers are employed on construction?
Something is seriously wrong here, folks.
This is not an embarrassment, it is an outrage.
I learned from my father, who went to work in a locomotive factory during the Great Depression at the age of seventeen and became involved in the SWOC, which fought for the 40-hour work week, Social Security, and unemployment benefits (important when factories would periodically, and without notice, shut down for extended periods), how important unions are for the protection of basic rights of working people.
And the Democratic Party was the standard-bearer for those rights. FDR said so.
When did the Democrats in Union County decide to sell them down the river?
And when did they tell you they were doing so?
Pickets are members of Union County
Building Trade Laborers Local #394.
-- Dan Damon
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2 comments:
I am not surprised at all by the selling out of union workers. How will Charlotte DeFillipo justify this one? Has she commented on this? UCIA cannot wash their hands and say it is not their responsibility! The election is only two months away and she has now given the Republicans the opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the Democratic party. Several seniors like Charles Nelson and Robert Bender who have been so important to getting the center built are trade unionsits and I am sure that they are outraged too. Wait until Dottie Gutenkauf weighs in on this. All the seniors who are union members should show up at the construction site and sing songs of solidarity with the picketing union members.
Here is what I am wondering. Where are the city council and assemblyman Green on this issue? Have any of them called to offer their comments on this? We entrust them to read the fine print on contracts so they can't say they are unaware of what the UCIA is doing in using scab labor to build this project. They depend on the AFL-CIO for political support. I think they should shut down construction immediately and have the developer hire union workers to complete the project, and issue an official apology for having their heads where the sun don't shine.
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