Five men stood outside Walgreens at Mission and 23rd Streets Tuesday morning, handing out fliers charging Walgreens with the “desecration of the American Way of Life.”
Sort of makes you wonder, What way of life?, but anyway, none of the men would speak to a reporter. “Call the number on the paper,” they said in Spanish.
The paper explained that Walgreens was hiring contractors who fail to meet “local area labor standards including providing health care and pensions.”
“Are you carpenters?” the reporter asked in Spanish. “Call the number on the paper and ask them.”
Robert Elfinger, in media relations at Walgreen’s headquarters in Deerfield, Ill., did not know if the men were carpenters. “Ask them,” he said. (This is a reporter’s life.)
Elfinger couldn’t get his e-mail to work, so he read the company’s statement ever so s-l-o-w-l-y over the phone. The last line cut to the nut of the issue: “We require that our developers and contractors bid our jobs to both union and non-union contractors. And when bids are competitive, we favor union labor.” Presumably when they’re not competitive, Walgreens goes with the lowest bidder.
Elfinger declined to say what percentage of the non-union bids in California or the United States are so much lower that non-union contractors win the job. The Carpenters Union directed Mission Loc@l to the labor organizer there, but she was not available for comment.
They are doing this outside of my local walgreens also. I think it is a scam, I try to support people who are real, my mother was a union coal miner and a feminist, but when I hear people talking nasty about me in spanish then I think they are the ones doing harm to the American way of life. I think they are hired to give out the fliers. I don’t have a car, so I shop at walgreens almost every day for little things I need because it’s a block away. They say nasty things to ppl coming and going out of the store. They have done it to me at least twice. If they have a beef with walgreens take it up with walgreens, don’t harass the customers.
Alas, you’re probably right. I ran into the picket on my way to the office and the posting was my attempt at a blog-like style, but perhaps you simply can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I did think the news was there – Walgreens hires non-union labor when it’s much cheaper than union labor and the union is upset enough to picket the store. But that news could have been told in a sentence and yes, it’s worthy of a follow-up to see exactly how often this happens. Thank you for reading us, Best, Lydia
This is not journalism, folks. Either you have a story for the public or you don’t. In this case, it’s the latter. Keep at it until you inform us, please.