Doo Doo Economics: Unions Intimidating Job Creators

In Philadelphia the unions have got ugly in order to stop two brothers, Matthew and Michael Pestronk, who want to developing apartment buildings. One building used to be the "vacant and decaying Goldtex textile factory." Another is a "300-unit-plus building in the Historic Germantown neighborhood."

Unions have resorted to:

• Throwing urine bottles on the site and blaming "immigrant workers."
• Planting asbestos in the walls
• Put up posters on site of Mike's dead dog
• Put up posters on site of Mike's wife with a penis superimposed on her face.
• Using slogans like "The Pestronks Are the 1 Percent. They Are Killing Our Communities" and "Post Brothers Exploits Minority Workers."

The head of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, Patrick Gallespie, demands $63 per hour according to an article by Claire Gordon titled Urine Bottles, Asbestos And A Dead Dog: Philly Union Battle Gets Ugly:

$63 an hour is an appropriate wage for a skilled carpenter. Working an average of 1,800 hours a year, that's an annual salary of $113,000, including health insurance and pension.

"It's a wage rate that has a fair middle-income life to it," he says. "So you can afford tuitions, a vacation once a year, two televisions in your house, and maybe buy your wife a car. The Pestronks are assaulting all that." The Pestronks say there's no way to be cost effective using only union labor.

Gallespie denies any dirty tactics this time around. It wasn't union-member urine, he says. The immigrant workers on the Germantown site regularly pee in bottles, and "throw them out the window."

And that unfortunate poster of Mike's wife? "I hope that wasn't a union member," he says. "Who in god's name would do that?" But that doesn't mean the union members aren't playing the game. "When people assault and bully you in the construction industry," he says, "you punch back."

"And we're allowed to protest their actions. We're allowed to tell the world they stink."

Is anyone ready to go invest in Philadelphia when you are required to deal with Gallespie and his followers?

In 1972, after union members refused a developer's offer of 70 percent union labor, 30 percent not, they attacked his construction site with smoke bombs, firebombs and hand grenades, in a scene described by a local paper as "right out of Vietnam."

In 2004, MTV bailed on its plans for a Real World Philadelphia over disputes with unions, only to be lured back after Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell personally called the producers to apologize.

Anyone investing in that hot mess studied some serious Doo Doo Economics at Harvard. Bring on the stimulus and food stamps!