Outside Boston's convention center and many of the big hotels are several hundred Beantown tradesmen ("plumbers, carpenters, and tin-knockers," according to one), handing out bright, neon-yellow leaflets.
"SAVE OUR JOBS! SAY NO TO MACWORLD," they say. "Macworld... is owned and produced by a company that supports and participates in outsourcing American jobs to other countries... Tell our Convention Center we don't condone our taxpayer funded facilities promoting companies such as IDG (Macworld) who ship our jobs overseas."
The leaflets feature the convention center's phone number in big, block numbers. "Let Macworld know you do not support the theft of American jobs," it urges.
"It's a shame the shoe industry in Boston just moved out," said Paul Parlon (at right), a Boston electrician who spent Monday afternoon handing out leaflets downtown at the behest of his boss.
"So many things have left here," he continued. "What's the point of sending kids to MIT? You go to any school around here and kids are looking for jobs. It makes no sense to have jobs moving out of the country."
The leafletting is organized by Boston Building Trades Council, a coalition of local unions, said one of Parlon's fellow leafletters on an opposite corner. The fellow, a heavyset guy dressed in a Red Sox t-shirt and shorts, declined to give his name.
He said there were about 250 tradesmen working the streets in two shifts: morning and afternoon. They will be handing out about 8,000 leaflets, he said. He'd personally passed out about 200 that afternoon, he said: four to people whose jobs had recently been outsourced.
A passerby wearing a Yankees cap said he'd lost his job to outsourcing earlier in the year. He'd just been rehired by the same company, he said, but had to take a $25,000 pay cut.
"(The company) saves money in the short term," he said, "But long term, they can't offer the same level of service."
"I usually throw these things away," he added, digging out a folded flyer from his back pocket and waving it in the air. "But not this one. I'm keeping this one."
