Yet Another Reason Not To Support Unions

They are often the biggest bullies I can think of:

Bethany Community Church decided last fall to start a lunch outreach program at several local high schools in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood, in an effort to show local teens that there were adults who cared about them. Youth pastor Nick Steinloski explained:

“It’s about connecting kids with adults who care about them. We are not telling them a Bible story before they get pizza.

It takes about 10 minutes to get rid of 40 large pizzas.”

The church had cleared the program with the schools before they began distributing pizza, and they operated in locations just off campus, serving the sophomores, juniors, and seniors who were permitted to leave campus for lunch.

But then the church got a call from a local union, according to Steinloski:

“Last week we got a call from a union. They said we were taking away a job, hours from employees at school in the kitchen because kids weren’t buying lunch.

A union representative left a voice mail on the church’s answering machine saying that handing out free pizza was irresponsible and costing people who serve the food their livelihood, accusing us of doing whatever it took to proselytize to the students.

He said that if we stop serving them pizza, we would start serving them drugs. I felt intimidated by that message.”

Steinloski noted that he felt like the reference to drugs was meant to be a threat that the union would accuse the church of handing out drugs, if they failed to stop handing out pizza.

Dave Westberg, the union’s business manager, admitted that he did call the church, but explained that he had a good reason – the free pizza was a threat to jobs:

“That free pizza is replacing roughly 500 purchased meals each week, and that is equal to 20 labor hours.”

Bullying?  Check.  Entitlement?  Check.  Bad logic?  Check.  Definitely a union operation.