Painters versus Clear Channel is David versus Goliath story

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/6427

Painters versus Clear Channel is David versus Goliath story

Lede: It’s David versus Goliath as a small group of painter’s union workers in Boston take on Clear Channel. Doug

Cunningham is covering the story.

By Doug Cunningham

Twenty-five workers from Boston’s International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Local 391 are in the fourth month
of a strike against Clear Channel Outdoor Advertising. The strike included direct action in late June when 50 picketers
stopped scabs from sneaking in to change a mass transit billboard. John Laughlin, spokesperson for the painter’s union
in Boston, says Clear Channel wants to cut the pay and benefits of these workers.

: “We’re facing a David versus Goliath situation and these 25 families don’t even have a slingshot. Clear
Channel is Wal-Mart without the smiley face.”
The strikers today are taking their fight to Bain Capital, a private equity group in Boston poised top buy Clear
Channel Outdoor Advertising.

: “A delegation of strikers as well as the president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, president of the Boston
Labor Council and some elected officials are gonna be going to Bain Capital’s national headquarters in Boston to
present a letter and to demand a meeting to ask them as the new owners to bring the workers back to work under the old
contract and sit down and negotiate a new contract.”