SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Union hands out flier: ‘What god hurts innocent people?’
May 25, 2016, 7:46 AM
A Seattle union argues that a church's effort to give away free pizza to high school students is threatening union jobs. (Dan Restione, KIRO Radio)
(Dan Restione, KIRO Radio)
It’s been days since Dori Monson asked a Seattle union representative to come on his show. But the KIRO Radio host isn’t giving up.
“They cannot answer the questions that I will ask,” Dori said. “How is this costing jobs?”
Related: Dori says Seattle school cafeteria workers’ union strong-arming youth pastors
Specifically, how does a local church handing out free pizza to high school students threaten cafeteria jobs that the union represents? The union that represents Seattle cafeteria workers has argued that the church’s free-pizza effort is taking away school lunch sales, and therefore taking away jobs at Seattle high schools. The union claims that threatens benefits for working families.
In a flier published by the International Union of Operating Engineers titled, “What god hurts innocent people?,” the union alleges that Green Lake’s Bethany Community Church, and it’s youth pastor Nick Steinloski, are “luring” students off campus at Ingraham, Hale, and Roosevelt high schools. The union says that the church is serving about 750 students “high fat, empty calorie pizza” from the trunks of cars near the schools.
We have humbly asked both Bethany Community Church and ‘Pastor Nick’ to stop doing this and offered to work with them so as to bring about a mechanism whereby they could purchase pizzas from out school kitchens (the kids love the nutritious pizza made under our HACCAP conditions) so as to protect our livelihoods and make for a ‘win/win’ situation, but Bethany has rejected this offer but has agreed to distribute this junk food after school in the future.
The union further states that while the “junk food” is not fit for high school students, it points out that there is a homeless shelter nearby that the church could divert their free-food efforts to.
But Dori further questions how far the union will go — after all, this is just one church with free pizza. There is nothing stopping students from going elsewhere.
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