16 ms·

True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and

True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and required fewer operator man hours, his job sites were picketed by unions. There were anonymous calls to 311 reporting violations but when the inspectors got there, they didn't find anything wrong. In my mind, I'm skeptical and it could have been the cranes or it could have been union influence.

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
It's the unions. On my way to work, I pass by a giant inflatable rat inflated by a gas motor that's hauled around by a truck. It's rather annoying when its tail gets loose and covers the sidewalk, as can happen on windy days when it's not tied down appropriately. It's probably 10 or 12 feet tall, at least, and the tail is maybe 12 feet long or longer. (3 feet is about one meter for those in metric land). It's parked there because one of the buildings under construction here didn't use the right amount of union labor, so there's always a rat present. Walk around and you'll see this same rat in different places; they've got a number of them. They've also got some rather impressive pigs and fat cats. This is the city that couldn't get rid of two operators per train on the L, even though technically they could more or less get by with zero (the trains mostly drive themselves on that line; the operator, to my understanding, just has to keep acknowledging that the train should proceed). Why? The unions protested and won, citing hitherto unknown safety reasons that should be plaguing cities like Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris, Washington D.C., etc. due to their lack of two people. Doubly so for those lines (including the AirTrain to JFK in NYC) that do not have operators at all...
- ChristianBundy 10y ago
  Here's what Scabby The Rat looks like, for those who are unfamiliar: http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ezequiel-garzon 10y ago
    Thank you! It's late where I live, English is not my native language and I was certain I was misreading all the nouns... but I wasn't! Amazing stuff.
- CPLX 10y ago
  Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.
  - unethical_ban 10y ago
    Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.
    - Frondo 10y ago
      I mentally swapped "corporations" out for "unions" in your sentence and it reads just as well. I consider it a credit to the anti-union propagandists that we're all so quick to discard one of the very few tools we laborers have to better our lot in life.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        Criticizing is not discarding. I will happily criticize both unions and corporations, and I don't think we should get rid of either concept.
        tombone12 10y ago
        No parent comment criticizing unions does it without the implication that they shouldn't exist. This is most easily seen by the total absence of any mention of a specific union, thus direction the objections towards the concept itself rather than any specific version of it.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        All unions, as a general concept, tend toward corruption. Just like corporations do. The concept itself is flawed. But flawed does not mean it shouldn't exist.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  this is not confined to NYC or cities. My cousins have run a successful commercial roofing business in a Mid Western state for decades. It is common that on any public building they work on to have an OSHA inspector come out on day if not each day, to have a local sheriff be called, and even once INS. All because this family owned business is non union and has always been. the sad part, this is a business which has never had more than two dozen employees. It isn't just them. If non union electricians are on site for isolating air conditioning systems if not building main power they too are subject to the same. The joke is, that for much of the state they know every OSHA inspector and even the inspectors joke about it. Still they have to stop work and dance the dance. and this is only for the legal means to intimidate. unions aren't just about protecting employees, they are big money for both those who run them and the politicians they support.
  - smogcutter 10y ago
    But in this case the union's job is specifically to make your cousins' life more difficult. If you don't want pressure from the unions... unionize your shop.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Seems like someone could do the same thing to the union jobs.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- DalaiObama 10y ago
  It's pretty fantastic in these hyper sensitive times that unions get away with calling poor working people rats!
- Tempest1981 10y ago
  Pics/article on the inflatable rat: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/giant-inflatable-union-rat-promotion-n-y-article-1.2955717 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/giant-inflatable-un...
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  "Competition Is for Losers". "If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly, writes Peter Thiel" But when unions do it, that's bad. Try to convince someone to intervene in abuse of monopoly by Microsoft, and you'll hear arguments that any kind of intervention would be worse that just leaving them to do what they will. Some more efficient competitor will take care of the problem for you eventually. But when unions do it, that's bad.
  - zackbloom 10y ago
    Monopolies are great for the people who run them, that is who Thiel is addressing. No one said they are good for consumers.
pbreit 10y ago
Why are they now sitting dormant instead of being used elsewhere?
jaredhansen 10y ago
Here's a fun story about union influence in NYC (with a little twist I hope you'll indulge[1]): In 2005, I moved into a 19th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan. My girlfriend and I spent about 12 hours at IKEA getting everything needed to furnish the place. By the time we finished taking (2!) taxies back from Jersey with all my stuff, it was about midnight on a Friday night. It took another hour or so to schlep everything up in the elevator - everything, that is, except for a sofa, which we'd tied to the roof of one of the taxis and which was now the last thing between us and sleep. We were just about to load it into the elevator for the last run of the night, but _not so fast!_, said the doorman: that's the passenger elevator, and you aren't allowed to use it for furniture. We pointed out that the sofa, at about 80-100 lbs, weighed quite a bit less than the full elevator cars-worth of stuff we'd already brought up, but he was undeterred. He could lose his job, he explained, because the building's contract with the labor union prohibited use of the passenger elevator for "furniture". OK, I said, not really understanding what that had to do with unions, where's the freight elevator? It's locked, he said, because you aren't allowed to use it. Why not? Because the building maintenance union regs say nobody who isn't in the union can touch that elevator, and require the use of union labor to move anything in or out via that elevator. (At something like $160/hr, iirc.) And since it was a Friday, the sofa would have to sit in the building lobby until 10am on Monday, at which point we could get in touch with the labor union to get the Appropriately Licensed and Bonded Personnel to load the sofa into the freight elevator. (Assuming the members of the sanitation engineers' union hadn't already decided it was trash and carted it away -- and yes, he did warn us about this.) Counting PATH train and taxi rides etc, we're now about 14 hours into the furnishing-my-apartment project. We haven't eaten in about 10 hours, it's the middle of the night, and I am beyond frustrated at this point. I don't want to get arrested though and the guy is clearly not going to give in, so I'm not really sure what to do. I half jokingly ask the guy: well, what about the stairs? Do the union regs prohibit the stairs too? He laughs. No, do whatever you want in the stairs, he says. I look at my gf. She looks at me. _Well? You want to?_, she says. Remember: 19 floors. I think: I can't believe we're going to do this. But we do. ~40 flights of stairs later, we both look like we just climbed out of a lake, and are breathing like horses. And though I'd already had a pretty strong suspicion in this direction, at this point I was certain: I had to marry this girl. I still don't think much of unions, but 11 years and 2 kids later, I'm grateful every day that I ended up with such a strong and capable partner. <3 [1](Sorry for the autobiography but I thought folks might appreciate the story. And it really is on-topic... sortof.)

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago

It's the unions. On my way to work, I pass by a giant inflatable rat inflated by a gas motor that's hauled around by a truck. It's rather annoying when its tail gets loose and covers the sidewalk, as can happen on windy days when it's not tied down appropriately. It's probably 10 or 12 feet tall, at least, and the tail is maybe 12 feet long or longer. (3 feet is about one meter for those in metric land). It's parked there because one of the buildings under construction here didn't use the right amount of union labor, so there's always a rat present. Walk around and you'll see this same rat in different places; they've got a number of them. They've also got some rather impressive pigs and fat cats. This is the city that couldn't get rid of two operators per train on the L, even though technically they could more or less get by with zero (the trains mostly drive themselves on that line; the operator, to my understanding, just has to keep acknowledging that the train should proceed). Why? The unions protested and won, citing hitherto unknown safety reasons that should be plaguing cities like Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris, Washington D.C., etc. due to their lack of two people. Doubly so for those lines (including the AirTrain to JFK in NYC) that do not have operators at all...

ChristianBundy 10y ago
Here's what Scabby The Rat looks like, for those who are unfamiliar: http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ezequiel-garzon 10y ago
  Thank you! It's late where I live, English is not my native language and I was certain I was misreading all the nouns... but I wasn't! Amazing stuff.
CPLX 10y ago
Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    I mentally swapped "corporations" out for "unions" in your sentence and it reads just as well. I consider it a credit to the anti-union propagandists that we're all so quick to discard one of the very few tools we laborers have to better our lot in life.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Criticizing is not discarding. I will happily criticize both unions and corporations, and I don't think we should get rid of either concept.
      - tombone12 10y ago
        No parent comment criticizing unions does it without the implication that they shouldn't exist. This is most easily seen by the total absence of any mention of a specific union, thus direction the objections towards the concept itself rather than any specific version of it.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        All unions, as a general concept, tend toward corruption. Just like corporations do. The concept itself is flawed. But flawed does not mean it shouldn't exist.
Shivetya 10y ago
this is not confined to NYC or cities. My cousins have run a successful commercial roofing business in a Mid Western state for decades. It is common that on any public building they work on to have an OSHA inspector come out on day if not each day, to have a local sheriff be called, and even once INS. All because this family owned business is non union and has always been. the sad part, this is a business which has never had more than two dozen employees. It isn't just them. If non union electricians are on site for isolating air conditioning systems if not building main power they too are subject to the same. The joke is, that for much of the state they know every OSHA inspector and even the inspectors joke about it. Still they have to stop work and dance the dance. and this is only for the legal means to intimidate. unions aren't just about protecting employees, they are big money for both those who run them and the politicians they support.
- smogcutter 10y ago
  But in this case the union's job is specifically to make your cousins' life more difficult. If you don't want pressure from the unions... unionize your shop.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Seems like someone could do the same thing to the union jobs.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
DalaiObama 10y ago
It's pretty fantastic in these hyper sensitive times that unions get away with calling poor working people rats!
Tempest1981 10y ago
Pics/article on the inflatable rat: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/giant-inflatable-union-rat-promotion-n-y-article-1.2955717 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/giant-inflatable-un...
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
"Competition Is for Losers". "If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly, writes Peter Thiel" But when unions do it, that's bad. Try to convince someone to intervene in abuse of monopoly by Microsoft, and you'll hear arguments that any kind of intervention would be worse that just leaving them to do what they will. Some more efficient competitor will take care of the problem for you eventually. But when unions do it, that's bad.
- zackbloom 10y ago
  Monopolies are great for the people who run them, that is who Thiel is addressing. No one said they are good for consumers.

pbreit 10y ago

Why are they now sitting dormant instead of being used elsewhere?

jaredhansen 10y ago

Here's a fun story about union influence in NYC (with a little twist I hope you'll indulge[1]): In 2005, I moved into a 19th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan. My girlfriend and I spent about 12 hours at IKEA getting everything needed to furnish the place. By the time we finished taking (2!) taxies back from Jersey with all my stuff, it was about midnight on a Friday night. It took another hour or so to schlep everything up in the elevator - everything, that is, except for a sofa, which we'd tied to the roof of one of the taxis and which was now the last thing between us and sleep. We were just about to load it into the elevator for the last run of the night, but _not so fast!_, said the doorman: that's the passenger elevator, and you aren't allowed to use it for furniture. We pointed out that the sofa, at about 80-100 lbs, weighed quite a bit less than the full elevator cars-worth of stuff we'd already brought up, but he was undeterred. He could lose his job, he explained, because the building's contract with the labor union prohibited use of the passenger elevator for "furniture". OK, I said, not really understanding what that had to do with unions, where's the freight elevator? It's locked, he said, because you aren't allowed to use it. Why not? Because the building maintenance union regs say nobody who isn't in the union can touch that elevator, and require the use of union labor to move anything in or out via that elevator. (At something like $160/hr, iirc.) And since it was a Friday, the sofa would have to sit in the building lobby until 10am on Monday, at which point we could get in touch with the labor union to get the Appropriately Licensed and Bonded Personnel to load the sofa into the freight elevator. (Assuming the members of the sanitation engineers' union hadn't already decided it was trash and carted it away -- and yes, he did warn us about this.) Counting PATH train and taxi rides etc, we're now about 14 hours into the furnishing-my-apartment project. We haven't eaten in about 10 hours, it's the middle of the night, and I am beyond frustrated at this point. I don't want to get arrested though and the guy is clearly not going to give in, so I'm not really sure what to do. I half jokingly ask the guy: well, what about the stairs? Do the union regs prohibit the stairs too? He laughs. No, do whatever you want in the stairs, he says. I look at my gf. She looks at me. _Well? You want to?_, she says. Remember: 19 floors. I think: I can't believe we're going to do this. But we do. ~40 flights of stairs later, we both look like we just climbed out of a lake, and are breathing like horses. And though I'd already had a pretty strong suspicion in this direction, at this point I was certain: I had to marry this girl. I still don't think much of unions, but 11 years and 2 kids later, I'm grateful every day that I ended up with such a strong and capable partner. <3 [1](Sorry for the autobiography but I thought folks might appreciate the story. And it really is on-topic... sortof.)