Perry Chiaramonte, of Fox News, noticed this bit a few days ago.

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) was carrying signs and chanting slogans in front of the future site of the United Food and Commercial Workers federal credit union in downtown Pittston.

Because UFCW is using non-union labor for the construction of this future site.  The reasons for both the picketing and the use of non-union labor is made clear by the IUPAT’s spokesperson:

Bob Griffiths said he never expected a fellow union to bypass organized labor to save a buck.

Doesn’t a business improve its chances of succeeding—and of keeping its employees employed—by holding down its costs?

Griffiths also said, without any irony,

It’s about the principal, not losing the work[.]

Never mind that those who got the work would be out of work if the union took the job.  Never mind that, as Griffiths has already bragged, that job would be done at higher cost, which can only be passed on to the credit unions’ customers.  Never mind that those customers include union members.

I have to ask: are unions for the working stiff, generally, or just the chosen few?  Are businesses just jobs welfare programs for unions?