Don’t spend too much time bemoaning the plight of Oregon members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701. They weren’t hired to install structural steel at the new Facebook data center construction site in Prineville, and they’re miffed and picketed the site.

There could be a couple of good reasons the general contractor on the job chose to hire a nonunion company from Utah.

One is money. If union members have priced themselves out of the job, that’s their problem, not the general contractor’s.

Consider: According to the Local 701 contract with the Oregon-Columbia Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America Inc., its members in Oregon are paid between about $31 and $45 per hour, depending in part upon where they work. Fringe benefits can add more than $14 per hour to that number.

Nonunion members, meanwhile, can expect to start work at about $23 to $30 per hour in Central Oregon, with wages rising from there.

Members of Local 701 have every right to picket the Facebook job, of course, and perhaps the weather will stay pleasant enough to make doing so a nice way to while away an afternoon. Even if it rains, however, don’t feel too sorry for union picketers. Construction, at least in the private sector, is a competitive business, and if Local 701 demands higher wages than the company can get elsewhere, it cannot expect to get every job.