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I'm not sold on labor unions being the primary factor in this, though they may contribute, because construction costs in the US are so much higher than countrie

I'm not sold on labor unions being the primary factor in this, though they may contribute, because construction costs in the US are so much higher than countries like France, which has even stronger labor unions and stricter regulation. I find it hard to believe that US labor unions are able to extract so much more value than their French counterparts. I think a bigger culprit is excessive local control and zoning restrictions, wielded to benefit property owners or to bleed developers and generate revenue for city governments. The shocking part, IMO, is that these costs far outweigh the cost added by notoriously strong French labor unions and EU regulation.

bluGill 5y ago
Unions in the US work different from France. In France unions wouldn't attempt to get their people $200/hour that the sandhogs in NYC get. We should bring the high priced unions to a realistic wage. However most union wages are not that far out of line. Also in France the union is more relaxed about letting go of jobs that are automated away. There is no reason a TBM needs twice as many people to operate it in NYC as in France. There is no reason for any trains to have a conductor anymore, and train drivers are something that should be all but dead as well (though France is way behind the automation curve here as well) That said, union labor is only a small part of the problem. Even if all of the most anti-union propaganda is taken as 100% true, union labor is still only a small fraction of the total cost of any build in the US. As such we need to look hard at what is going on in the other parts of construction.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Thanks to the EU construction companies in France have access to Eastern European labourers. And they don't do unions.
steveBK123 5y ago
From family in the industry, my understanding is it’s not union benefits/wages/etc per se, but more the work rules that haven’t changed with the times driving over staffing, inability to fire bad performers, and overtime issues. There’s a lot of on-the-clock non-work built into the work rules. My relatives in the industry described the typical day as involving on-the-clock time built in for cleanup&changing into/out of work clothes, briefing on tasks for the day, safety briefing (AM and again after lunch for legal reasons), smoke/coffee breaks, etc. The longest stretch of uninterrupted construction is about a 2 hour sprint into the end of the day. On the staffing front, the only lever a project manager has is to give the 2-3 hardworking guys out of 12 a boatload of overtime hours to get the actual work done. This is one reason that on most every job site around the city you see some pretty sick cars. Those 2-3 guys are getting 50% of the work done out of the 12, and getting paid Google engineering money for it. NYT article years back talked about 2nd avenue subway covered examples of work rules. Tunnel boring machine in NY requires 3-4x the staffing of Paris, because thats the contract negotiated in the 70s when it was seen to be reducing jobs.. and no one has revisited it. This is no small figure as we have a handful of these digging tunnels the last few years, at the rate of 50ft/day... for months. Similarly there is a mandatory on-site oiler who basically sits in the break room all day because the machines do not need constant oiling anymore the way they did when the rule was written half a century ago. One example from my relative - on a large NYC project he worked, they couldn’t take deliveries from suppliers on Saturday because it required the job site to be opened. Per union rules this would have required some inane number of staff to be on-site getting overtime rather than just say the guy to open the gate & staff (if any) required to empty the truck. A lot of this is because public sector unions are treated as a voting constituent rather than a vendor by the government, and no politician ever wants to cross them.
- neither_color 5y ago
  I have some family in the industry as well and they report the same thing happens with every crew, a few of the workers are what you would call "ninjas/rockstars" in software and the rest are just there to do the minimum. Unfortunately it's hard to tell when hiring because everyone acts motivated for the job and their real work ethic doesn't show up until a few weeks later and you're stuck with them.
  - steveBK123 5y ago
    Right on a normal project you’d weed out the poor performers but in this case its basically not possible. The workers knowing this is the case leads to a class of workers who show up and do the minimum. As long as they don’t do anything overtly that would trigger firing for cause, they can coast from project to project. Therefore the only way project managers can get anything done is to give 25% of the team the opportunity to work 2x the hours for 2.5-3x the pay. So instead of paying just for your 12 guys, you are paying for equivalent of 9+(3x3) = 18 guys when its really like 6-9 guys worth of work getting done.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  I will also add that there is essentially a ton of overhead built in by construction firms dealing with the city/MTA/PA. The industry generally sees them as being difficult customers who change their mind, plan poorly, and have a lot of change requests. This results in a fairly small pool of firms bidding on projects, the costs being padded, plus overruns and change requests being tacked on as they go for even more cost.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I read a paper on tunneling costs. One of their explanations why costs were higher in the US was the government shifts the risk onto the contractor. And then tries to save money by not employing enough oversight. The result low numbers of heavily padded bids on contracts. And then execution tends to be inflexible and prone to bogging down.
barbacoa 5y ago
In New York City unions are essentially a subsidiary of the political system, funneling money into reelection champagnes. In return politicians return their support by requiring that any government contract must be awarded to contractors that use union labor. It is all a racket. I have heard stories from people who have done civil work in NYC and the level of corruption and waste is staggering. Like $5000 billed labor hours to drive to a site to plug in a cable. Firms will bit a 50% surcharge on any projects in NYC to compensate with the red tape and union labor costs.

bluGill 5y ago

Unions in the US work different from France. In France unions wouldn't attempt to get their people $200/hour that the sandhogs in NYC get. We should bring the high priced unions to a realistic wage. However most union wages are not that far out of line. Also in France the union is more relaxed about letting go of jobs that are automated away. There is no reason a TBM needs twice as many people to operate it in NYC as in France. There is no reason for any trains to have a conductor anymore, and train drivers are something that should be all but dead as well (though France is way behind the automation curve here as well) That said, union labor is only a small part of the problem. Even if all of the most anti-union propaganda is taken as 100% true, union labor is still only a small fraction of the total cost of any build in the US. As such we need to look hard at what is going on in the other parts of construction.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Thanks to the EU construction companies in France have access to Eastern European labourers. And they don't do unions.

steveBK123 5y ago

From family in the industry, my understanding is it’s not union benefits/wages/etc per se, but more the work rules that haven’t changed with the times driving over staffing, inability to fire bad performers, and overtime issues. There’s a lot of on-the-clock non-work built into the work rules. My relatives in the industry described the typical day as involving on-the-clock time built in for cleanup&changing into/out of work clothes, briefing on tasks for the day, safety briefing (AM and again after lunch for legal reasons), smoke/coffee breaks, etc. The longest stretch of uninterrupted construction is about a 2 hour sprint into the end of the day. On the staffing front, the only lever a project manager has is to give the 2-3 hardworking guys out of 12 a boatload of overtime hours to get the actual work done. This is one reason that on most every job site around the city you see some pretty sick cars. Those 2-3 guys are getting 50% of the work done out of the 12, and getting paid Google engineering money for it. NYT article years back talked about 2nd avenue subway covered examples of work rules. Tunnel boring machine in NY requires 3-4x the staffing of Paris, because thats the contract negotiated in the 70s when it was seen to be reducing jobs.. and no one has revisited it. This is no small figure as we have a handful of these digging tunnels the last few years, at the rate of 50ft/day... for months. Similarly there is a mandatory on-site oiler who basically sits in the break room all day because the machines do not need constant oiling anymore the way they did when the rule was written half a century ago. One example from my relative - on a large NYC project he worked, they couldn’t take deliveries from suppliers on Saturday because it required the job site to be opened. Per union rules this would have required some inane number of staff to be on-site getting overtime rather than just say the guy to open the gate & staff (if any) required to empty the truck. A lot of this is because public sector unions are treated as a voting constituent rather than a vendor by the government, and no politician ever wants to cross them.

neither_color 5y ago
I have some family in the industry as well and they report the same thing happens with every crew, a few of the workers are what you would call "ninjas/rockstars" in software and the rest are just there to do the minimum. Unfortunately it's hard to tell when hiring because everyone acts motivated for the job and their real work ethic doesn't show up until a few weeks later and you're stuck with them.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  Right on a normal project you’d weed out the poor performers but in this case its basically not possible. The workers knowing this is the case leads to a class of workers who show up and do the minimum. As long as they don’t do anything overtly that would trigger firing for cause, they can coast from project to project. Therefore the only way project managers can get anything done is to give 25% of the team the opportunity to work 2x the hours for 2.5-3x the pay. So instead of paying just for your 12 guys, you are paying for equivalent of 9+(3x3) = 18 guys when its really like 6-9 guys worth of work getting done.
steveBK123 5y ago
I will also add that there is essentially a ton of overhead built in by construction firms dealing with the city/MTA/PA. The industry generally sees them as being difficult customers who change their mind, plan poorly, and have a lot of change requests. This results in a fairly small pool of firms bidding on projects, the costs being padded, plus overruns and change requests being tacked on as they go for even more cost.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  I read a paper on tunneling costs. One of their explanations why costs were higher in the US was the government shifts the risk onto the contractor. And then tries to save money by not employing enough oversight. The result low numbers of heavily padded bids on contracts. And then execution tends to be inflexible and prone to bogging down.

barbacoa 5y ago

In New York City unions are essentially a subsidiary of the political system, funneling money into reelection champagnes. In return politicians return their support by requiring that any government contract must be awarded to contractors that use union labor. It is all a racket. I have heard stories from people who have done civil work in NYC and the level of corruption and waste is staggering. Like $5000 billed labor hours to drive to a site to plug in a cable. Firms will bit a 50% surcharge on any projects in NYC to compensate with the red tape and union labor costs.