Assholes Ruin Sculpture Park For Everyone

Possibly we first saw this meme in a blog post, but the barely controlled chaos that is our newsreader makes calling it back up not feasible at this time. It caught our eye. Hey, that's smart, we thought, wish we'd thought of it. We're pretty sure the first time we saw someone tie the delays at the Sculputure Park to the striking concrete workers was in a blog post. Ninety percent certain. Then it appeared in the Seattle Times and in about a million other blog posts and each time we see it now the idea loses a little luster. It became annoying and then kind of insulting to the strikers who are trying to do what they feel is the right thing and to news consumers who are trying to figure out what's going on in the world. Now it's in the P-I today, but at least they have the decency to mention a few other projects that are suffering before hitting readers with the cutesy Sculpture Park, and we should be clear that Seattlest is all in favor of the Sculpture Park and we're so there once it opens we'll be there every day. We'll be the Seattlest sculpture. But using the Sculpture Park and its delays (and let's point out that it's also been delayed due to non-concrete related factors) is condescending and belittling. Readers don't care about light rail or the Fremont Bridge - They need to be clobbered with the Sculpture Park! Because this strike is screwing the city, right SDOT?

State Department of Transportation projects have been less troubled.

"We're not a poster child for this," state spokeswoman Melanie Coon said of the dispute. But she said, "A lengthy strike would put us in the position of having more projects affected."

You can read the Seattle Times and the P-I articles from end to end and get yourself into a frothy uproar over the poor Sculpture Park and come away with absolutely no information about why the members of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302 are even strking in the first place.

They're striking for the right to strike!

The union workers are demanding the freedom to honor the strikes of other unions without getting terminated, said Allan Darr, the union's business manager.

That's from the Daily Herald in Everett, which is apparently the only paper within hearing distance that can actually cover the story.

The right to strike! Well, and money.

They also want pay increases that will keep up with King and Snohomish counties' rising cost of living, he said. The engineers rejected the companies' proposal last month to increase pay by $3.95 an hour over the next three years. Right now, the engineers make between $22 and $24 an hour.