… we have no intention of letting non-union volunteers help you
In a two-page Oct. 29 contract, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) local 1049 demanded union dues, pay hikes and benefit contributions from Florida electric utilities before its workers would be permitted to help reconnect power to Long Island communities. The demand came as Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on the Northeastern United States, stranding tens of millions without electricity.
The “Letter of Assent,” which The Daily Caller obtained from the Florida Municipal Electric Association, demanded 11 separate financial commitments from municipal power companies and electrical cooperatives in the Sunshine State. The agreement, for any utility that decided to sign it, would have been in force from Oct. 29 to Nov. 29. […]
The Florida Municipal Electric Association is a statewide trade group that represents 34 separate utility companies. The letter, Moline said, was sent to Florida’s nonunion power companies.
“We had crews ready to go on Monday when the storm hit,” he told TheDC. ”We had dozens of line workers ready to go. There have been hundreds of line workers who have been told, ‘We don’t want you unless you’re part of the union.’ And as a result, people in New York and New Jersey are having the power turned on slower than everywhere else.”
Bloomberg or his representatives would not answer The Daily Caller questions; but it appears that some New Yorkers are not happy with Hiz Mayorness either.
Storm-ravaged and weary Rockaways residents cornered Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to angrily demand more aid for their devastated neighborhood.
“When are we gonna get some help?” blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look. […]
There was mud on streets where lights weren’t working, sand dunes in front of homes and piles of rubble all over.
“I knew it was going to be real bad, but I never expected this devastation,” said resident Ned Morgan, whose basement flooded up to 6 feet, destroying furniture, family pictures and electronics.
“They’re looting cars all over the place,” Morgan said. “This is New York City. They have to help us.”
Some Rockaways residents who work as firefighters in The Bronx and Manhattan were fuming yesterday — sitting idly in their firehouses while their neighbors and family members miles away struggled to get help.
“We’re all going crazy,” said one firefighter, who asked his name not be used for fear of retribution. “They’re not deploying any extra resources, and we’re just sitting around.”
Bloomberg later told reporters dropping temperatures are “dangerous” and the city is sending 25,000 blankets to the Rockaways, where it could be another two weeks before power is restored.
Aren’t unions grand?
Thus it is in a world where having a job means having false security, even as others die for the sake of your overtime.
And people think natural tragedy is worse than man-made tragedy.
Unions are efficient devices for limiting the growth of jobs: in this respect they are a species of monopoly. Works for them, anyhow. What say we bust the newer trusts?
To reiterate, it’s kind of refreshing to see aunion screwing somebody other than their own membership.
Folks will be even less happy when the Noreaster hits next week.
I hope that residents finally get a clue and stop showing any respect to unions. I work with power companies all over the U.S., and the best utilities are in the south and midwest. “Best” = good engineers, no unions, and excellent services.
The total idiots that I deal with are almost exclusively on the west coast and anyone in a union. If I get an engineering request that sounds like it came from a janitor, I don’t even have to look at the address to know it came from california.
Unions. Just another brick in this little Republic’s wall of failure.
“This is New York City. They have to help us.”
Sorry, pal. No ‘they’ don’t.
This might lead to a democratic movement to make NY and NJ right to work states. Write laws that judges can;t fudge and then pass them again when they get tossed out on fiat. It;s the only way.
Unless there is a mob that is willing to shoot a few union guys in the face to get their point across. Not that I’m recommending it, but a union is a rather small weak mob compared to really pissed off temperate climate neighborhoods with a lot of concealing bushes and hedges around and winter on the way.
Dear new Yorkers.
Move to Georgia. After two years of hating “the hicks” for their accents you’ll come to realize that the locals consider YOU to be a uncouth, uneducated, dimwitted but loud, quasi-racist, gutter-urban studio-apartment savages with a comically rude, ear splitting brogue of your own. THEN you’ll realize that you are nothing special and the locals are nothing awful and you’ll arrive at a sort of mutual respect as you recognize them all as fellow human beings.
That is you will once you get over all that ‘Shirley Jackson’s the Lottery’ paranoia and come to realize that talking point spewing, rank and file, poser-marxists and their alternate bubble reality assumptions, founded as they are in pure hateful ignorance and fear of the other, are just as annoyingly clueless and unconsciously bigoted as any stereotypical jesus freak.
CSI and Law and Order will suddenly start to seem like corny bullshit written by idiots who are afraid to open their window blinds and get all of their news and opinions from the their page of comments of Huffington Post articles.
Of course you’ll still stupidly try to unionize things and recreate the damned burrows and aldermen system for a couple of years. Reflexes die hard and without manacles your arms will seem too light and prone to just going crazy on you. But eventually you’ll realize how stupid the idea of recreating the hell you fled actually is and you’ll wake up and find out that 30 degree winters and 102 degree summers and lots of space ain’t bad at all. Plus you can drive a car and find places to park it!
Only if they are classed as a nonprotected invasive species.
Notice I didn’t tell them to move to Texas?
1.) I’m sure our coast won’t be good enough for them,
2.) we tend to get more hurricanes that Georgia does anyway (God seems to really like kickin’ those storms through the goalposts of Florida and the Yucatan so we usually have to share them with Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana)
3.) we need to keep some room open for all the poor saps fleeing California and Michigan as they collapse, although there might be some hope for Michigan.
” . . . whose basement flooded up to 6 feet, destroying furniture, family pictures and electronics. ”
Are you kidding me? Several days’ worth of notice, and they leave family pictures and electronic gear down in the basement?
Let’s hear it for Darwin.