Protest leads to police escort for construction workers

[PACMAN]

11:28 a.m. June 9, 2006



ANGELICA MARTINEZ / Union-Tribune
Members of a construction workers union protest outside the former Robinson's-May building Friday morning.
SAN DIEGO – Police escorted about 50 construction workers into the old Robinson's-May building at the Fashion Valley mall early Friday while hundreds of union construction employees jeered and stood in protest.
Officers were called to the building, which is being refurbished into a Bloomingdale's, at about 7 a.m. when non-union workers tried to enter and were confronted by protesters, said Mike Morgan, of San Diego-based Morgan Development, a metal-framing company hired for the project.

There were no major confrontations between the two groups, though the protesters jeered loudly as groups of workers were escorted in, police Lt. Mark R. Jones said.

The protesters, about 200 members of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters Local 1506, said they were angry about the hiring of Rin-Buhr Construction Corp., a New York-based general contractor that was hired to do drywall for the project.

“They chose to pay substandard wages and benefits,” said Tracy West, the union's spokesman, arguing that taxpayers would have to foot the bill if a worker was injured.

A Rin-Buhr official at the site declined to comment on the protest.
Brian Rush, the project manager for C.W. Driver, the general contractor for the project, said the union employees “have a right to protest as long as they want,” and that there are no ongoing negotiations between the builders and the unions.

[Retdetsgt]

Personally, I don't think police should have that kind of involvement in labor disputes. Let them hire security guards. I wouldn't want to be escorting scabs.

[PACMAN]

we charged the store 5 grand for cost re-coup of wasting our time...

[Retdetsgt]

we charged the store 5 grand for cost re-coup of wasting our time...

Good. I hated getting involved in that shit. We had a Teamsters' strike when I was in uniform and it was in my precinct. What a crock! Everytime the strikers did anything, the trucking company called. The Teamsters' had a union guy there who knew the fine line of the law and they stayed just inside it, barely, but still inside. The scabs got all nervous, well shit. What did they expect when they're coming in doing other peoples' jobs? Donuts and coffee at the picket line?