Big Labor’s $250,735 Gaffe
James Sherk /
Michael Kinsley once observed that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” By that measure Michael Gittings, the treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 711, committed an enormous gaffe when he appeared in a recent Daily Show segment.
Gittings’s Las Vegas–based union is protesting Wal-Mart for paying low wages and hiring non-union workers. As he put it, such behavior “comes down to greed.”
Perhaps that is why his local outsources its protests of Wal-Mart to non-union workers and pays them the minimum wage. As Gittings admitted on air:
You are talking about the actual protestors? Those are temporary workers who are provided through a temporary employment agency. … You have to realize our union members are working. We don’t have union members that are able to go down there on a daily basis.
Protesting low-wage non-union labor with low-wage non-union labor? Ouch. The Daily Show exposé will probably ruffle many union feathers. (more…)