Outsourcing the Picket Line

Their placards have the name of the targeted firm taped at the top; when the picketers move on to another company, the name is changed.

Capitol Drywall was the name on one placard two weeks ago. The carpenters' picketers were outside an office building on New Hampshire Avenue NW, where the company's employees were erecting drywall.

Mark Sokoloff, Capitol's vice president of operations, said his company is not unionized but offers its employees fair and competitive wages, as well as benefits.

"It's something that we would like to see disappear and go away," he said of the picket lines that appear frequently at job sites. "But if it won't, it's something that we will deal with."

The picketers get mixed reactions from passersby. Some drivers honk to show support. But many who work in nearby buildings and must listen to the picketers' chants for several hours are irritated.

Several picketers said they have had water thrown on them from upper floors in office buildings. That only encourages picketers to get louder, said one picketer who asked that his name not be published.

D.C. police Cmdr. Patrick Burke, who oversees the homeland security and special operations division, said the picketers have never broken any laws. If police receive noise complaints, officers will ask them to quiet down, he said, and they always comply.

"They have a First Amendment right to engage in free speech and assembly," he said. "We don't want to discourage people from doing so. But they just have to do so within reason."

Some activists for the homeless are unhappy with the practice of paid picketing. They say it amounts to using people down on their luck rather than giving them a hand up. Ingrid Reed, who coordinates job placement and housing at the Community for Creative Non-Violence shelter, said the money the unions pay picketers would be better spent on training or apprentice programs that teach skills.

"These jobs won't pay the rent," Reed said. "If they're out there every day Monday through Friday, when are they looking for a job?"

Reed said many residents of the shelter are hired to demonstrate at corners throughout the city.

"On any given day, if you have 20 protesters out there somewhere, 15 of them live here," she said.

Several picketers said they see the time spent on the line as one of the few legal ways they are able to earn money.

William R. Strange, 41, said he started working as a for-hire picket two years ago when he lived in a homeless shelter on New York Avenue. He is now paid $12 an hour because he plays the buckets during the demonstrations.

A few months ago, after a day's picketing across from the National Geographic Society at 17th and M streets NW, Strange went inside and filled out a job application. He now loads trucks for National Geographic's warehouse at night. He still pickets during the day.

Strange also recently moved into his own one-bedroom apartment near the Brookland Metro station.

"Every day I turn that key to my apartment, I feel great. I owe that to the picketing," he said. "And it keeps me out of trouble."