(Michael Chamberlain/Nevada Business Coalition) – Leave it to Nevada’s unions to protest the few people who are actually creating jobs in this economy.
Each day a handful of picketers appear on the sidewalk along Warm Springs Road in front of the Glazier’s grocery store. They trudge back and forth holding their signs, occasionally stopping to chat with each other. Since Glazier’s opened in September 2009 they’ve engaged in this ritual.
Who are these union members walking the line in support of their brethren? They’re not union members at all but hired hands from a temporary employment agency. This must be what the unions believe to be “creating jobs.”
At 10:00 right on the nose, two of them walk off the line heading toward the drug store in the same shopping center as Glazier’s. They’re on their break, we’re told.
At the end of the hot, sweaty day they hop on their bicycles, climb in their dented autos, or head off on foot. They will return in the morning to this low-paying job with scant benefits protesting the plight of the workers inside Glazier’s, who are much better paid and provided for and who work in a much more pleasant atmosphere.
Even as grocery stores are among the thousands of businesses in the valley that have shut their doors during this downturn, Glazier’s jumped into the market and has survived the toughest years Southern Nevada has ever experienced.
Glazier’s isn’t the same cookie-cutter grocery seen in every other strip mall in the valley. From the bright exterior to the wide, clean aisles of stained concrete to the vast array of deli, hot food and other counters that are rarely all found in one store, it differs from the corporate chains that dominate. The staff is friendly and gracious and the owner, Bill Glazier, is in the office inside the store every day.
Glazier’s is precisely the type of business the state needs to move ahead and work its way out of the recession. We need forward-looking entrepreneurs willing to take a chance and push ahead when others are pulling back. The innovative idea behind the store stands in stark contrast to the unions’ thinking, which is stuck in the days of the early 1900’s.
As the Nevada economy struggles to climb out of the worst downturn any of us can remember there are a few bright lights. Unfortunately, the Silver State has some of the most powerful and backward-thinking unions in the nation and they are intent on extinguishing those lights wherever they see them.
(Michael Chamberlain is Executive Director of Nevada Business Coalition.)
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