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Yeah, 125 guys from Florida getting here a day late COST LIVES. Most likely they would have been sitting in the Nassau Coliseum parking lot waiting for direction and supplies because management can't be arsed to upgrade their computer system since 1975.
The system is left to crumble because it's a political patronage utility where bankers and lawyers are left to oversee a complex public service that won't bring itself into the 21st century. Much like most of the Island, which is suffering a direct result of antiquated government services.
Those are the 125 we know of, many of the states helping us have non-union labor, excusing this because it's a small amount is missing the point, we had a state of emergency and the unions were delaying workers. Delaying one worker for the benefit of the union is one too many when we have a pending disaster.
The FL utility was quoted in the article as being told "we want them to get a taste of being in a union so they can go home and try to unionize". Spin it any way you care to, in order to make it sound good, it was totally in line with the perception that most people have of unions - thuggish and only caring about themselves. And going back to my train story, not the brightest bulbs in the pack and not interested in getting a job done on any but their own terms and timetable.
Yeah, the problems start with management which is clearly beyond inept. But I'm sick of people mking these crews out to be some altruistic beings. I've heard plenty of stories of people talking to out of state crews, including my FIL - but can't seem to find anyone who's seen or spoken to a LIPA crew.
The union is working in the interests of the workers... if they want to start paying union dues and giving away 30%+ of their paycheck while they're in town. And they're holding LIPA/National Grid and all of their customers hostage to accomplish their humanitarian goal. I'm sure a similar "join or die" letter went out to every single crew the IBEW Local could confirm was coming in to aid in the recovery effort. All of that is completely unnecessary and against both common sense and the official position of the union itself! How much of an impact it had is impossible to say, but what is possible to say is that it had an impact.
It's not possible to say that it had an impact. We have ~8000 guys here and supposedly many of them are just sitting around waiting for orders from management, or having to drive all over the place to get parts because there is no organization. You can speculate, but that's about it.
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Is LIPA management more to blame? Yeah. Don't worry, there is more than enough anger to go around. That doesn't make this tactic any less disgusting, or the response to it some rhetoric based purely in "anti-union" sentiment. I'm very pro-union when the union benefits it's membership without hurting the public. Stuff like this is just embarrassing and all too common.
That's fine, but the story should begin and end with that sentiment, and not carry into the typical "RAWR DISBAND ALL UNIONS!" crap. The only people who stand to benefit from weakening unions are business owners (setting aside the problems we have here on LI with teachers and the PBA, which are a totally different issue).
It's more of a rip off to the taxpayer than the out of town crews. They would have had to pay all that crap but they'd get NYS Prevailing Wage which is what we pay for everything. Change a light bulb? That's an Electrician...min. $58/hr. No joke, all on the prevailing wage schedules for EVERY job in NY. Do the job for less and you go on the State's debarred list and your business is finished. The pendulum has swung soooo far in the union's direction it's surreal. We pay for it EVERY DAY.
Instead of the $40 an hour they pay in Fla, the Fla guys would have gotten $80/hr and had to pay $40 in union costs. Who is getting the shaft? The taxpayer.
I didn't realize the difference in pay was that much anymore. You know, all the expat advertisers on CD are always on here swearing on their kids and their mother that the rates of pay between LI and the red states they decamped to are the same or barely any different nowadays. I guess I shouldn't believe everything I read from our expat red staters.
Sure the union wages are higher, but if they signed the contract they'd be dumping 29% of those union wages (plus $9.75/hr) into IBEW funds they would never see anything out of, and with the higher income tax rates in New York I seriously doubt they're making out much better (if at all). It's a big payday just based on the O/T, but it would be ridiculous to see this as the IBEW looking out for these guys. Plus it puts them in a difficult position with their own employers for no good reason.
More importantly, AFAIK the IBEW/UWUA official position is that they welcome any and all help (union and non-union) during a natural disaster. This was completely unnecessary and clearly designed as some sort of twisted "us and them" membership drive ploy that would have added some nice funding into the union coffers. The 125 workers here are the only ones we know about, I'm positive that other crews went through this same thing... and 125 bodies being delayed even a few days seriously hurts the recovery effort. That's a lot of manpower and equipment wasted that could have gone to good use.
It's a big payday for the UNION, not the workers.
Yet the workers have uprooted their lives to move to a different area and many are living like pigs (camping in Eisenhower Park for example and some of those nights were COLD). They are here living with little comfort to help US. They should end up with more than what they make in their own state for the inconvenience of it all.
You left off the part where they were paid union wages as well, which are a damn sight higher than what they would have made otherwise.
This is a non-story used to stir up anti-union sentiment. Whoopdie do, 125 workers were slightly delayed. I'm sure that had a measurable effect vs. a crumbling system and completely incompetent non-union management.
Of course part of the deal was that they get union wages? You think anyone actually thought they were going to get Florida wages if they signed that?
I had to spell that OUT?
The point I was making was that the payments the union expected from these men for coming here to work and receive prevailing union wages was excessive and greedy on the part of the union especially since these men will go home and never benefit from any of the things they were paying into.
And how do YOU know it was just those 125 guys that were delayed? For all we know, it could have been a lot more.
I didn't realize the difference in pay was that much anymore. You know, all the expat advertisers on CD are always on here swearing on their kids and their mother that the rates of pay between LI and the red states they decamped to are the same or barely any different nowadays. I guess I shouldn't believe everything I read from our expat red staters.
How do you know the amounts that are being thrown around are correct? This seemed like a hypothetical to me.
But you're right, we all po' whyte trash he'ah. Houses go for $350K and up where I live, but people living at poverty level are still mysteriously snatching them up within days of them going on the market.
Oh, wait, I forgot - $350K is what ya'll pays for a house in the 'danch on Long Island. $350K is peanuts - it actuallys IS where the po' white trash lives. My bad. Guess the two areas are comparable after all.
Oh well - I still like my crappy downtrodden $350K area better. But to each his own.
Yeah, 125 guys from Florida getting here a day late COST LIVES. Most likely they would have been sitting in the Nassau Coliseum parking lot waiting for direction and supplies because management can't be arsed to upgrade their computer system since 1975.
The system is left to crumble because it's a political patronage utility where bankers and lawyers are left to oversee a complex public service that won't bring itself into the 21st century. Much like most of the Island, which is suffering a direct result of antiquated government services.
Public sector unions are a big cause of that patronage and antiquated government services at the expense of the taxpayer and you know it. They buy politicians left and right with impugnity and manage to control whole labor forces and greatly inflate the price of labor all on the backs of the public.
How do you know the amounts that are being thrown around are correct? This seemed like a hypothetical to me.
But you're right, we all po' whyte trash he'ah. Houses go for $350K and up where I live, but people living at poverty level are still mysteriously snatching them up within days of them going on the market.
Oh, wait, I forgot - $350K is what ya'll pays for a house in the 'danch on Long Island. $350K is peanuts - it actuallys IS where the po' white trash lives. My bad. Guess the two areas are comparable after all.
Oh well - I still like my crappy downtrodden $350K area better. But to each his own.
What the heck are you talking about? Early for drinkin' girl!
What the heck are you talking about? Early for drinkin' girl!
Uh huh. Like you didn't understand what I was getting at. That's fine - no need to derail the thread further.
Have a lovely commute this evening
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This seemed like a hypothetical to me.
