IVAN SENNE, member of Valley Building and Construction Trades Union, pickets in comfort at the Country Kitchen building site Wednesday. The union is protesting the use of non-union painters on the job. (Photo by Art Hanson)

Construction workers are back on the job at the Country Kitchen restaurant site today, but painters are not.

Walter Meidl, painting contractor for the job, said his men cannot go back to work because they are not union members.

Valley Building and Construction Trade Union of Mankato sent a lone picket to the site Wednesday to protest the use of non-union painters. Plumbers, carpenters and electricians on the job stopped working, awaiting word from their unions on what to do.

Meidl said the union workers will continue working as long as his men stay off the job.

“If I paid the scale they (the union) are asking, I’d be washed up in New Ulm,”Meidl said.” The present wage fits in with the New Ulm wage scale. The union wage is almost double the wage paid in New Ulm.”

Meidl said he felt the real discrimination was not against him, but against the New Ulm wage scale.

He said he would take a “wait and see”attitude toward dealing with the union.

New Ulm Daily Journal

Dec. 4, 1975