Public Employee Union Blocks Pizza for Children

Public Employee Union Blocks Pizza for Children
Unions-bully-church-over-free-pizza-FEATURED.jpg

Public Employee Union Blocks Pizza for Children

A Seattle public school employee union allowed its true colors to show this week when it threatened to picket a church for giving away free pizza to school students.

Unions are dues-collections enterprises, and even feeding children is less important th­an dues collection from the employees doing those jobs.

The money-counter for the International Union of Operating Engineers local 609, David Westberg, told the KOMO news reporter who covered these events, “If they don’t stop, we will be picketing.”

Westberg says local school district food service workers’ jobs are based on how many meals are sold. If fewer meals are sold, fewer workers are needed to prepare them.

He neglected to mention that fewer dues dollars will be collected to pay his $100,000-plus-per-year salary.

He also doesn’t mention that the charitable act means that fewer taxpayer dollars will be necessary.

Feeling pressure, the church will change its routine to serving free pizza after school instead of during lunch so there’s no competition with lunchtime sales.

The union, on the other hand, responded to the pressure of the news attention by issuing an even more strident letter asking, “What God Hurts Innocent People?”

Not the first time.

This is not the first time union financial interest in collecting dues has pre-empted charity.

In 2010, parents and community members wanted to spruce up their local Tacoma schools with a volunteer work party. Someone suggested the effort would impact union jobs, and the union representing school workers objected. The effort was significantly scaled back.

Parents say one of the vetoed projects would have removed overgrown bushes that block views of the street from the school. School employees can’t see who is approaching the building. The overgrowth also interferes with drivers pulling in and out of school property. A parent said the last time the bushes were trimmed back – by parents – was a year prior. “If it’s somebody’s job, then they’re paying them to do nothing because it hasn’t been done.”

See “Union Squelches Tacoma School Volunteer Work

Senior Policy Analyst
jlund@freedomfoundation.com
Jami Lund is the Freedom Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst. From 2004 to 2011, he developed legislative policy as a research analyst for the Washington House Republican Caucus. Prior to that he worked for the Freedom Foundation as the Project Manager for the Teachers Paycheck Protection project, shepherding the development of the Foundation’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court case to protect teacher rights. Jami is an accomplished speaker and researcher, one of Washington state’s top scholars on education policy and finance.