Hello out there. I know it has been a while since I’ve posted anything, but that seems to be how blogs work these days. You post furiously and with no disregard and then one day you realize its been months since you last talked to anyone.

I’ve received what I would call the first response from someone claiming to be part of the union. It was a comment that had come in so I’m posting here so that we can all see it and so that it doesn’t end up invisible to everyone. I plan on contacting this representative as well to get some more perspective from the other side. Here are the commenter’s notes in blue, my responses in black.

I stumbled on your site when I was looking for Cataldo. It’s kinda neat that your discussion showed up so high in the “dr cataldo plymouth” search rankings. Normally, I just let people say and think what they want without responding because I have found that most people are not open-minded and will not change their minds no matter what. Because you do not seem completely close-minded, I decided to post a response.

Thank you for noticing. I’m surprised as well that I came up so high in the ratings…It was a cheap and easy way it seems to get high participation on a site where I talk about nerdy things. You are correct as well, I’d like to get a perspective from the other side and let people decide for themselves. My original attempts to contact the protesters (via the information provided on the pamphlet) proved unsuccessful.

I am the person who went in to speak to Dr. Cataldo about the labor dispute. I was invited into his office, where we had a long discussion about the issues. There was no “protest” inside his office, as you describe.

That is how it was told to me. I was told that it became uncomfortable and you were asked to leave…I’d like to here you expound on this a bit more if you don’t mind.

The letter that you insinuate that I tried to “force” him to sign was given to him because HE called to say he wanted to write a letter but didn’t know how to phrase it, so we offered to show him a sample that someone else had written. Instead of using the letter as he stated, he gave the letter to Freidges Drywall who tried to use it in their failed legal attack against us.

You have misrepresented many facts, and I would love to explain the whole thing to you, but I’m not sure how much room I have for comments. If you will email me, I will be happy to go into more detail about the issue with Cataldo, as well as the benefit to every citizen of protecting area standards for carpenters. I would also be happy to answer all of the other questions that you ask rhetorically and answer sarcastically in your posts.

Sure, that sounds fine. I will be emailing you after this post to get more information. Feel free to comment here as well.

For the other readers who have responded with the standard “free market” type of argument, let me just say that I will never understand how right-minded people can be passionately pro low wage. Third world countries are defined as such because of the low income of the average worker. Do we really have people in this country who advocate America losing our place as one of the wealthiest countries in the world just so some business owner can make more money? You see, it’s not reasonable to say that Karkela went with the lowest bid. Union contractors compete with companies like Freidges on price all the time. If a contractor receives the same amount of money for a job but instead of providing the same healthcare that the market already bears decides to pocket the money, every taxpayer pays when the children of his uninsured employee’s need medical care that the worker cannot afford. This is not to say that every company should pay for the healthcare coverage for all of their employees. This is not to say that every job should pay $30 per hour, which I think is a point to which you have already agreed. We are not even saying that a contractor shouldn’t be a multi-gozillionaire! We have not asked Cataldo to use Union contractors, we have not asked Freidges to be a union contractor. We are just saying that we believe that EVERY carpenter, not just union carpenters, should get what’s fair. Protecting the standards in our industry is not unique. Contractors, the stock market, radio, television, banks, building managers, accountants, lawyers, etc all have organizations with the expressed purposes of protecting the standards within their respective industry. Believe it or not, they limit the “free market” every day. Don’t believe me? This afternoon, start a bank, put your radio station on the air, or start practicing law and you will soon find out what I mean. The difference is they have the money and the power to change the laws or hold well-attended press conferences. We have to resort to other means of getting the message out. To answer your next question, the reason we have to be careful who speaks on our behalf is because… remember who makes the laws? I would love the opportunity to discuss this with you more, but I’m not even sure how much of this post will make it on or if you’ll allow it to stay on your website. If you want further dialogue, email me and let me know. I would also be happy to address anything the (middle) finger-pointing Rosie may have had to say.

There are certainly some points to be made in your last paragraph. I’d like to take this to my readers and see what they have to say about your rebuttal and perhaps get some more perspective on this as well. I accidentally deleted the original comment to paste it here, so please go ahead and post a comment with the email address you’d like me to contact you at and I will use that email.

lunks