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Ardmore Coffee Shop Goes Toe-To-Toe With Philadelphia Carpenters Union

ARDMORE (CBS) -- A mom and pop coffee shop is going toe to toe with one of the Philadelphia Carpenters Union. The battle has been escalating since March, when union members began protesting the merchants decision to hire non-union workers to build a second a shop in Center City. 


Milkboys co-owner Jamie Lokedoff says the carpenters union didn't take kindly to seeing non-union contractors building a second Milkboys in center city.

"We always anticipated they were gonna show downtown, we never thought that they were gonna show up in Ardmore," said Lokedoff.

The Carpenters tacked up a sign and have been handing out leaflets reading "shame on Milkboy." Recently, though, Lokedoff and his partner, Tommy Joyner, struck back with humor.

"Our first move was to sell these t-shirts that said 'shame on milkboy.' Those t-shirts sold out just like that. And then they changed their sign to 'milkboy coffee hurts our community.' So we changed our t-shirt to say 'menace to Ardmore.'"

Lokedoff concedes that the campaign has impacted their bottom line. Pat Gillespie, head of the Building and Trades Council says the carpenters won't let up because there's much more at stake.

"It's just part of the spiraling down into this race to the bottom that everyone seems to be caught up in. No one who works for wages in the last ten years has actually realized a raise in pay."

Reported by Paul Kurtz, KYW Newsradio

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