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In a conversation among a handful of union organizers last night, I heard this expression used. I believe it means "cushy" - as in "He's got a pie card job," meaning he doesn't have to work and has lots of perks - like he's got some card that gives him access to "the pie."
This was the explanation I got from the folks present, and a little research turned up a fair number of links to the International Workers of the World (i.e. the Wobblies), but I'd like to know more.
Any ideas on the origins of this odd phrase? And do I have the meaning correct (one union trivia site said that a pie card was a paid job within a union, presumably as opposed to those who work for their unions as volunteers)?
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WOW, Hyla!!
you stumped everyone.
i'm not sure i've ever witnessed this phenomenon, in my [admittedly brief] AWAD travels!
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Carpal Tunnel
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I wouldn't leap to any contusions©... it's been just one day and maybe tsuwm hasn't checked in yet  ---- ©MaxQ, pty. Most rights reserved.
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I wouldn't leap to any contusions©... it's been just one day and maybe tsuwm hasn't checked in yet
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©MaxQ, pty. Most rights reserved.actually™, i was just tossing down the gauntlet for the specific purpose of trying to lure tsuwm out. but you probably knew that, didn't ya? 
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You guys!! I was going for the record for the fastest plummet down the list of any thread ever, and now you've ruined it. It was almost defenestrated, and now tsuwm's gonna see it, and somebody'll get their knickers in a nodus! 
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I queried my friend Walter about this one, he's an English scholar, and a lefty from way back -- his father a union organizer in the 1930s. Here's what he emailed to me:
It doesn't seem like a very odd phrase to me, considering that "meal ticket" is very similar in meaning, and common, but also not entirely self-explanatory. That is, "a ticket for a meal" is clear enough at its immediate level of meaning, but you need a context for its connotations. Same with "a card for pie." Anyway, here's OED stuff. First group are simple definitions, second group are historical examples of usage, all of course from printed sources..
pie-card U.S. slang,
(a) [1] a meal ticket; [2] one who begs for a meal;
(b) [1] a union-card; [2] the holder of a union-card; also attrib. [my brackets for clarity - wl]
----------------------------
1909 W. G. Davenport Butte & Montana beneath X-Ray 56 Say, on the dead level, Andy, couldn’t you let me have a lonely ten spot?.. Say, Andy, you’ve just got to jar loose with five bucks for my *pie card is so full of holes it looks like a piece of mosquito bar.
1929 Amer. Speech IV. 343 Pie card, a union card used to obtain food or lodging.
1931 ‘D. Stiff’ Milk & Honey Route 211 Pie card, one who hangs around and lives on a remittance man or some other person with money.
1945 Seafarers’ Log 25 May 2/1 The Commie stooges and pie-cards kick us around.
1948 Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. II. 678 Pie-card, a union card used as a credential in begging.
1960 New Left Rev. 26 Sept. 41/1 The retired..comfortably fixed pie-card artists of every lost..cause of the labour and radical movements.
1973 C. Rubin Log 64 All of them phony, pie-card officials who sit on their big fat asses and twiddle their thumbs.
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Pooh-Bah
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This is fascinating! I have been a union man most of my working life, and have not come across this expression. That in itself is not, prhaps, surprising as it is obviously a US expression, and the left over here do not follow the American lead, if they can help it. But what is surprising is that we do not, so far as I am aware, have an equivalent expression.
It is not as if British Unions don't have paid officials - they have those in abundance - or that they don't hve welfare schemes for their members which can be (and occasionally are) abused by officials. But we don't have a word for it. Very strange.
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Pooh-Bah
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Rhu, are you familiar with the terms goldbricking (loafing on the job) and featherbedding (the practice of union to require an employer to hire more workers than needed)?
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Pooh-Bah
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goldbricking (loafing on the job) and featherbedding (the practice of union to require an employer to hire more workers than needed)?
I have heard the second but not the first. Neither are in use over here - "goldbricking" is called "skiving" in UK - a strange word for which I have no idea of the etymology. [too-lazy-to LIU icon]
"Featherbedding" is just a dream over here - we have no name for a condition that just doesn't exist! In the days of full employment/labour shortages some unions went in for "restictive practices" - limiting the sort of work that a worker might undertake - a carpenter had to drill the hole for the electrician to feed the cable through, etc, and the carpenter had to have a mate, so did the electrician. These are akin to your "featherbedding, but the workers were taken from existing staf left over from when there was either more work, or most likely, when there was less technology that did away with the necessity for so many skilled people.
But we never had a word for that
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