Earlier this month, a union boss for cafeteria workers threatened Bethany Community Church in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood for handing out pizza to students just off campus at Nathan Hale, Ingraham, and Roosevelt high schools. Dave Westberg, the business manager for the union, admitted he called the church to level accusations.
According to Westberg, students’ access to “free pizza is replacing roughly 500 purchased meals each week, and that is equal to 20 labor hours.” Thus, the union boss felt compelled to attack the church for taking away 20 hours of pay a week from his members.
Of course, that claim is ridiculous. Westberg’s calculations assume that, if students did not get free pizza the one day each week that the church was handing it out, that they would buy food from the cafeteria.
But, sophomore, juniors, and seniors are allowed to go off campus for lunch — and often do that. Additionally, some students bring their lunch from home. The calculations are baseless.
Well, the union just took its unreasonable hostility to the next level.
A flier the union (the International Union of Operating Engineers) is now passing out reads, “What God hurts innocent people?” It goes on to use outrageous language, claiming the church is “luring” students off campus by serving “high fat, empty calorie pizza” — as if the union really cares about students’ nutrition.
In an effort to avoid unnecessary conflict and demonstrate that it cares about the schools’ workers, Bethany Community Church said it would “change its routine to serving free pizza after school instead of during lunch so there’s no competition with lunchtime sales.” Unfortunately, if the flier is any indication, that gesture hasn’t pleased the hostile unions.
The flier goes on:
“We have humbly asked both Bethany Community Church and “Pastor Nick” to stop doing this and offered to work with them so as to bring about a mechanism whereby they could purchase the pizzas from school kitchens (the kids love the nutritious pizza made under our HACCAP conditions) so as to protect our livelihoods and make for a “win/win” situation, but Bethany has rejected this offer but has agreed to distribute this junk food after school in the future.”
So, apparently, the union is upset that Bethany Community Church didn’t agree to be extorted by the union. Of course the union is just trying to blackmail the church into purchasing its “[supposedly] nutritious pizza” and pass it out to kids who — according to the potential eaters of said pizza — DON’T like it. That would ensure sales that would otherwise not have been possible.
The union wraps up its embarrassing flier by insinuating that “junk food” is not fit for high school students, but is for a homeless shelter. It suggests that the church give their free pizza to a homeless shelter nearby rather than to students.
As KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson recently pointed out, this story has garnered national attention, and it is the union that looks bad. The union has thoroughly embarrassed itself — its little flier makes it worse.
You can check out the flier below:
Right. Like they would actually send the union shills home if there are less students eating in the cafeteria. They get “paid for 8” if there are 10 or 500 students eating in the cafeteria. They should thank the church for more time to sit on their dead a$$es
Pastor Nick, stand your ground! You’ve already caved once, and look what happened. We now know this union employee is after the spotlight at best, and after the church at worst. It’s interesting he placed the word Pastor in quotes, in an act of either ignorance or malice.
Perhaps Pastor Nick should invite the union employee to his church’s fellowship hall for a tasty, nutritious meal of kale, turnips and gruel.
We can rest assured the union employee refuses to eat anything that remotely resembles the ingredients the church’s pizza contains: cheese and meat for sure. I’m confident he’s not a hypocrite and 100% walks his talk.
Accordingly, the union should thank its employee in advance for the 2016 Christmas (oops, holiday) dinner with no alcohol (containing empty calories he disdains) and absolutely no food with any fat whatsoever (meat, fish or fowl? Perish the thought!), but featuring a tasty buffet of rutabaga, Swiss chard, tofu and parsnip sticks with a main course of white bean soup – plus a bountiful selection of 3 different types of beet juice. Yum!
Not only should they invite the union thugs over for a meal but they should also lace it with LSD as payback.
The students have a CHOICE!!! They can eat at school, or they can go off campus to a drive through, or they can choose to go to the pizza at church. Since when did we start telling people what they can and can’t eat or where they can and can’t eat…last time I checked this was still the land of the FREE !
why I go out of my way to patronize non-union shops
“Buy our junk food; not theirs!”
The unions don’t realize how ridiculous they make themselves look. And to think they tried to get the school to buy the pizza from the union people. Nope, sorry–that’s goofy. Just more union bullies.
Whether their calculations are off or not it doesn’t matter no one is obligated to patronize union run shops. The church shouldn’t try to placate them and should serve even more free pizza during lunch if they want to.