Protesters at a Pulte Homes work site in Florence were sprayed repeatedly with high-pressure water coming from a work truck. The union got it all on tape. Watch the union’s edited tape here.

There were about 20 protesters in the May 16 incident, and it happened again on May 22, said Dana Kennedy, an AFL-CIO spokeswoman.

Israel Hernandez, a painter for Pulte, told the AFL-CIO:
“This wasn’t what we meant when we ask for drinking water on the job site. We spend 12 hours a day building homes for Pulte Homes. As soon as we want to talk about our rights, what we want, they treat us like this. We don’t believe it’s fair.”

The company says the protesters aren’t even construction workers, but rather people hired by the union to hold picket signs.

Kennedy said they were workers who were fired by subcontractors of Pulte, and they’re not paid protesters.

Jackque Petroulakis, a spokeswoman for Pulte in Phoenix, said “this is all part of a harrassment campaign that has been going on for many months … Nevertheless, we don’t condone what happened here at all.”

“What we’re doing is an educational campaign. What they’re doing is harrassing the workers for protesting,” Kennedy said from the union side.

The company is investigating, Petroulakis said, but it’s hard to tell in the heavily edited video who is to blame.

Petroulakis also said the protesters were asked to get out of the way and refused. She said it looks like they are trying to get wet and get on camera, with some workers jumping into, not away from, the water.

She said the bottom line is: “We value the welfare and well being of all those people who do work at our communities and we hold our subcontractors to very high standards.”

In a letter sent to the union from Pulte’s attorney, the lawyer says “federally mandated dust control requirements” made it necessary to spray the worksite, although Pulte has asked contract drivers not to spray water on people.

The video doesn’t look like dust control, Kennedy said.
“The only dust control they were doing is washing the dust off the workers’ backs. The truck actually put it in reverse to go over the workers again and other parts of the street are completely dry. Pulte supervisors were laughing while this was going on.”