- NOTE: I Don’t See An Oiler In This Diagram
Lew Rockwell had a great post this morning (with video goodness!) about “Little Three” union officials slacking off and engaging in personal “business” (shopping, beer-buying) while on the clock. I wrote and related this story to Lew;
Hi Lew,
It is amazing to see a news organization, particularly one in a “union town” covering this story, since such abuses are longstanding and widespread. But there is nothing unique about what the two union reps in the story are accused of.
In 1993 - 1994, I was the safety and health manager of a large construction project ($280M) at a major oil refinery. Being a union plant, of course all of the contractors on the project were forced to hire union “labor” to do all tasks, including some that in a free market would not be done.
Before any work could commence, the contractors on the project had to sign a “project labor agreement”, or PLA, which set forth staffing requirements, work rules, and union jurisdiction. The number of unions involved in the endeavor was mind-boggling. We had carpenters, cement finishers, dockbuilders, electricians, laborers, millwrights, pipefitters, plumbers, teamsters, operating engineers, and one or two others I am sure I am forgetting.
Because the refinery was under a state-imposed environmental compliance deadline for completion, the project ran 2 12-hour shifts per day, 7 days per week to try to meet the deadline. Such mandates and deadlines always present tremendous opportunities for graft. I’ll spare you the details, except at one point the civil contractor was paying a “pipefitter” to make sandwiches for sale to the project personnel, which at 300 - plus workers undoubtedly handsomely enhanced his own personal profit.
Some of the unions even had subgroups, such as one class of operating engineers that ran pumps and generators up to a certain size, others that operated smaller loaders and excavators, another class of operators that ran larger excavators, and finally the “top” class of operating engineers, the crane operators.
The operating engineers’ contract at the time required that all equipment over a certain (arbitrary, low) horsepower be staffed by an operating engineer and an oiler, whether the maintenance regime for the equipment required continuous hand-oiling or not. I will leave it to you to ponder whether modern machinery made in the last 50 years would have such an intense need for maintenance.
Because this requirement undoubtedly caused many objections, an alternate “compliance” method was for the contractor to pay the operating engineer an extra hour for “grease time” (how apt), ostensibly to compensate the operating engineer for coming in an hour early to maintain and prepare his equipment for the start of the shift.
Except, remember, the project operated on 2 12-hour shifts, 7 days per week, which meant that during “grease time” the equipment was still being used by the operator on the previous shift. So we in essence have two operating engineers being paid to work 13 hours per day each, for a total of 26 hours of labor pay per qualifying machine per day.
It gets better. In the construction trades, the union representative is paid a little more than the highest-paid worker on the project. Because of the size of the crew, the project labor agreement mandated that the operating engineers have two project-paid union representatives, a “shop steward”, and a “master mechanic”, who were each paid “grease time’ also.
I’m not entirely sure what the duties of a “shop steward” are, but since the project already had 3 or 4 actual full-time mechanics, the “master mechanic” had few if any remaining visible duties. If you were lucky, you could get hold of him over the project radio system 3 to 4 hours per day at best. Allegedly one would have had better luck looking for him on the golf course most days, weather permitting. Yet because his position was mandated by the PLA, he was being paid 26 hours per day, 7 days per week.
After about 6-8 months of this, it became so embarrassing that the union itself actually put a stop to it, assigning a second-shift “master mechanic”, an extremely able, competent, and hard-working operating engineer who performed all of his union “duties” and operated equipment as well. But this was only one small instance of union abuse on the project.
Somewhere in this sorry tale I should mention that the construction ‘managers’ for the project were Kellogg, Brown, and Root (nee Brown and Root Braun), a particularly ill-named group of losers and no-accounts who actually impeded safety and progress on the project during their tenure.
Please use my alias if you print this.
UPDATE: This was funny.
We Will Miss George W Bush. Seriously.
Please, We Should Thank You.
OK, it’s time to come clean. We at LibertyGuys, and many, many libertarians, minarchists, anarchists, war opponents, and other free-thinkers, while relieved that he can finally do no more direct harm to the entire globe on a whim, secretly miss George W. Bush already. Because, you see, deep down in our heart of hearts, we were really, really grateful for his presidency.
What I mean is this. We opposed all the wars, the spying on Americans, the torture, the crony capitalism, the transparent use of the entire Imperial military apparatus for the benefit of connected flunkies, then, finally, the direct transfer of all of our financial futures to his friends on Wall Street, with more than 80% of the people opposed. All of it.
We opposed all the spending, the creation of vast new entitlements, the bailouts for all of the evil f**ks on Wall Street, K Street, and Detroit. In short, we opposed nearly everything the man stands for or did. But deep down, after every bad thing he did, a little part of us said a small “amen”.
Sure, it was nice to have something to agree with our liberal friends on, the wars, the imperialism, the torture, Katrina, etc. Any and all of those things was reason enough to hate him. But it wasn’t the reason we love him.
The thing, the thing we very much love about George W. Bush is the way he made the case against statism. Every thing the man did included all of the classic statist ingredients; war, demonization of the other (Muslims), socialism, protectionism, polarization and politicization of every sphere, cronyism, and corporatism, covered with a sauce of greed and venality, and served up with a double helping of rank incompetence.
The War on Iraq, the destruction of civilization in Afghanistan, the Katrina disaster, the revelations of massive illegal wiretapping , any one of these would have destroyed a lesser demon, say a Richard Nixon, or a Lyndon Johnson. But not our man George. He plagued us, completely intact, to the very end. Even the collapse of our entire system of corporatism and imperial finance did not unhorse this cowboy. His was a singular reign.
Perversely, this is why we are afraid of the manifestly competent politician who replaced him, the Obamessiah. Our worst fear, all us freedom-loving types who have awakened to the government’s war on civilization, that the man may actually place people of intelligence, merit, and skill in those powerful positions available to his patronage is being realized.
We are alarmed that he has filled his staffs with brilliant, competent idealogues. We might, quite understandably be terrified, absolutely terrified, that Obama, the unitary leader of the biggest, richest, most powerful state ever to exist, might make the trains run on time. Except, we know he can’t.
Oh he will do everything his fans and supporters expect of him. He will mouth all the right platitudes, he will speak “directly” to the people, his armies of PR flacks and press dupesters will dutifully report on his triumphs, while sweeping his failures under a rug. It has been, and will be a brilliant performance.
And none of it will make any difference. The financial crisis is gearing up to become a fiscal and monetary tsunami, one that will sweep away all before it. They, those bright, motivated bureaucrats won’t know what hit them.
But they will enjoy, at least for a while the completely undeserved trust and goodwill of many of the people, even as we all march into the depths of it.
(photo from ratemyeverything.com)