Carpenters Picket Dollar General in St. Charles, Missouri, for Bad Business Practice

This week, despite the cold harsh windy weather, members of the Carpenters' District Council of Greater St. Louis stood on street corners near Dollar General Stores picketing the stores employment practices. A man dressed in cold weather coveralls to keep warm, distributed flyers to people in passing vehicles for hours in the Shop & Save Plaza at Highway 94 and Caulks Hill Road. According to the flyer, the local Dollar General stores are contracting work outside the state of Missouri from contractors like Bonham Service Group Inc, who pay wages and benefits well below the established area standards. Bonham Service Group is in Mahomet, Illinois. It was unavailable for comment.

With an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent in December of 2009, Missouri has the highest rate of unemployment in more than 30 years. Many of those who are unemployed are contractors from the Carpenters District and they are livid. With so many of their workers laid off having no work at all through the Holiday Season, Christmas is looking grim.

Joe, a carpenter in Ballwin, Missouri says "I'm 7th term, and I cant find any commercial work. HELP!"

E.B. of St. Genevieve, Missouri who is emotionally consumed with the situation, wonders if it might even be his own fault. He said, he transferred his book of business to the St. Louis area in January and has "had 1 job." He says, "I am a journeyman with over 10 yrs of industrial concrete experience and I know very well there is plenty of concrete work out there. I wanna know who I pissed off. If I don't get work soon I'm gonna end up cutting my own throat.

Melinda in St. Louis, Missouri expresses her frustration as well. "My husband reached journeyman carpenter and then got laid off. He's been out of work since July. Nobody wants to hire a journeyman. They don't want to pay out that much. The union says they don't help journeyman find jobs, only apprentices. If you're a journeyman you're on you own. Unemployment runs out soon, so I guess we'll really be screwed then." she says.

In order to persuade the Dollar General stores to look for contractors locally, the fliers are being distributed wherever the stores are located, telling consumers to "purchase elsewhere."