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mmmarvel
2015 Sep 8, 11:11am
WHAT???? Not $15 an hour??? The nerve. Wait - maybe they should join or form a union. But then no one would want to hire them and ... dang, this life thing is HARD!!!
http://nypost.com/2015/09/08/carpenters-union-workers-protest-10-an-hour-wages/
The city's carpenters union has been protesting developers who don't pay wages of nearly $50 an hour — but its own workers who stage the demonstrations don't make much more than minimum wage, The Post has learned.
Three employees of the District Council of Carpenters who were protesting outside a developer's offices near Union Square last week each earn less than $20,000 a year, official records show.
They stood outside JDS Development's Fifth Avenue headquarters with a large banner bearing an image of a stop sign.
“JDS Wage Suppression & Unfair Hiring Practices! JDS' dangerous development deal is unsafe, unequal, unfair and UNACCEPTABLE!” it read.
But the sign could easily have been directed at their own union, critics said.
One of the three workers, Juan Tavares, earned $14,795 last year, according to records filed by the union with the US Labor Department for an employee with the same name.
Another of the three, Jacinto Abreau, was paid $17,090 in 2014.
The third, Crystal Pacheco, said she was paid “about $9 an hour” to work an 8 a.m.-to-3 p.m. shift.
The union admitted the starting salary for banner workers is $10 an hour.
The salaries are well below what advocates, including many union leaders, consider a “living wage.”
A state wage board convened by Gov. Cuomo recommended boosting the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $15 an hour in the city by 2018.
Numerous union, including the carpenters', support the higher wage.
The current state minium wage is $8.75 an hour.
Union carpenters must be paid a minimum of $48.35 an hour on city contracts under rates set by the Comptroller's Office.
“This is hypocrisy. The unions want to raise costs that are hurtful to business, but they don't practice what they preach,” said Mike Durant, president of the New York chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
“They won't even pay what they purport should be the minimum wage. It's comical.”
Carpenters-union leaders defended their pay scales.