Volunteers

In tough times, the volunteer spirit isthriving:

According to a Volunteering in America study, last year 63 million Americans volunteered more than eight billion hours. When you calculate average wages and benefits for city employees, local governments saved $173 billion.

In many places churches are leading the way. “We’re at a time when, as citizens we need to be giving ourselves away freely to serve our communities,” says Dave Edler, pastor at Yakima’s Foursquare Church which held a park cleanup with several hundred volunteers recently.

But not everyone is thrilled about the civic spirit. Some unions are pushing back, fearing volunteers are cutting into their territory. “They’re eroding the number of hours for our people,” says Ian Gordon of Laborer’s Union 1239 in Seattle. “It’s of great concern that they might be doing further work that we would normally do.”

Gordon’s union represent 900 city employees, nearly half of them maintenance workers in the Parks Department, which cut staff by 14 percent. He’s met with city officials over the volunteer issue and insisted on a significant roadblock. Volunteers are not allowed to drive work trucks or use power equipment of any kind. No lawnmowers, no weed whackers, no leaf blowers.

Len Gilroy of the Reason Institute says it’s about protecting their turf. “Unions see a threat to jobs and lavish benefits that they’ve secured for their employees,” says Gilroy.

They're only doing the jobs that unionized workers sometimes won't do unless they get extra money...