Unions should encourage – not slap down – volunteer help
KATHLEEN MERRYMAN; STAFF WRITER
It was kind of like putting a jackhammer through your work boot.
Members of Teamsters Local Union No. 117 formally complained to the state this month about what they claim are unfair labor practices by Pierce County Parks & Recreation.
Those practices include allowing residents of Midland to mow the grass and pick up trash at Dawson Park.
The union charged that allowing such volunteer efforts at Dawson and Gonyea parks deprived its members of chances to work.
It’s not the first time local unions have moved against a volunteer initiative. The City of Tacoma union pulled a similar stunt last summer.
Put kindly, those charges indicate a break with the new reality of making the most of a lot less.
Put unkindly, they reflect an unwillingness to bend when the rest of us are pretzeled out. That inflexibility is hard to defend, even for people who appreciate what unions have done for us.
There is a lot to appreciate.
Union members put their livelihoods, and lives, on the line to wrest national standards for wages, hours and workplace safety from robber barons. All workers have benefitted from that struggle. As the bumper sticker says, they’re the people who gave us the weekend.
Union volunteers donate hundreds of thousands of hours of work to the community each year. They build wheelchair ramps, repair wiring for nonprofits, drive and donate groceries to food banks. They give millions to charities. Their apprenticeship programs train young workers, including at-risk youths, to lead productive lives.
These are people who understand that when we all contribute, we make our community more beautiful, safer, more fun, more secure.
That’s why the complaint about Dawson stings so much.
The county cut parks funding, and parks and rec cut services. Midland residents learned there was no money to cut Dawson’s grass, collect litter or clean toilets. So they did what union members have done so often: They volunteered.
At first, the bigs turned down the neighbors’ offer, citing liability and standards.
So residents rode their mowers to Dawson and gave it a haircut.
That very civil disobedience worked, and they set up a mowing schedule.
The whole exercise has pushed neighbors together to form a productive community flexing its political muscle. In its own back-handed way, it has been good for Midland.
Getting people together to make modest improvements is always good.
That’s why a group of Dome Top Alliance members got a bunch of bargain flowers and planted them around Tacoma’s old Sector 4 police substation last summer. There was nothing in the old beds but dry dirt. They weren’t worried about irrigation. They planned to water them while they were volunteering at the front desk.
A City of Tacoma work crew, with no flowers to plant and no plans or money to get any, slapped them with a grievance.
It’s not as though the volunteers were taking away jobs. City crews had all they could handle cutting blackberries and hauling garbage out of derelict properties, and sending the bill to the owners. A few geraniums were not going to affect their job security.
That grievance, however, made them and their union a laughingstock in the neighborhood. It spoiled what should have been a happy partnership.
The union may think it scored a victory against the county, which has come up with $80,000 for parks maintenance.
It did not. It cut what that sum can deliver.
There is no shortage of work to be done in the county’s parks.
If there’s money to be had, spend it on something the neighbors can’t, or would prefer not to, do.
Maintain the restrooms. Repair playgrounds. Mow parks where neighbors aren’t organized. Keep lake accesses open.
I’ve heard there may even be some delayed maintenance at Sprinker Recreation Center.
In this county, we can use all the help we can get, and all the help we can give.
Unions should not be slapping grievances on that help.
They should welcome it, and build on it.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
