Pipe War! Plumbers Union Rips Joe The Plumber

[kpete]

Pipe War! Plumbers Union Rips Joe The Plumber For Campaigning Against EFCA

The Plumbers Union is steaming over the news that Joe the Plumber has been enlisted by groups opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act to campaign at a number of Pennsylvania rallies against the measure.

A Plumbers Union official tells me that Joe is “selling out real plumbers.”

I checked in with Rick Terven, the political and legislative director for The United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist sharing the full name.) He tore into his high-profile plumber colleague as follows:

Joe the plumber is selling out real plumbers. Right now, labor law is stacked against real plumbers. Real plumbers want and need the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to empower themselves to join a union, without fear of intimidation or losing their jobs. Joe the Plumber doesn’t speak for real plumbers.

Terven claimed that the Plumbers Union, which says it has over 300,000 members, had done a survey of non-union plumbers finding that 70% of them wanted to join a union if they could do so without fear of retribution, though I couldn’t immediately get the details of their survey.

more at:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/labor/pipe-war-plumbers-union-rips-joe-the-plumber-for-campaigning-against-efca/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Rick Terven should say, "Joe, the non-plumber" instead.

[malaise]

2. But but but

Joe the plumber is not a plumber. He only plunges the truth into the depths of sewers.