Outsourcing the Picket Line
Although the placards of the picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building identify them 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. Carpenters locals across the country are outsourcing their picket lines, hiring the homeless, students, retirees and day laborers to get their message across. Larry Hujo, a spokesman for the Indiana-Kentucky Regional Council of Carpenters, calls it a "shift in the paradigm" of picketing.
See "Outsourcing the Picket Line", Keith L. Alexander, The Washington Post, July 24, 2007