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.)
I remember a long time ago there was a team that needed some very expensive hardware from sun (think several 100k).
The manager of the group could NOT get approval for the equipment. It was a massive technicality as another department was supposed to buy setup and "run" the equipment and they refused for a number of reasons.
The manager in question figured out that he could sign a PO up to $7000. A large number of PO's later the server was to be delivered.
This, to say the least, was going to be a bigger problem. Though a space had been secured for it (in a server room no less) getting it into the building was going to be an issue.
They ended up bringing it in on a weekend, only to find the freight elevator locked, and the rack it came in unable to fit in the normal elevator for people.
The manager, his team, the sun sales man and the delivery driver took the whole thing to bits in the lobby. There were parts EVERYWHERE and a rather bemused security guard who was baffled as to why this was happening this way.
It all turned out fine in the end, the manager wasn't fired (promoted in fact), the salesman got his commission, and the team got the equipment they needed.
If I were a betting man that driver was a union guy and ended up with time and 1/2 for the insanity on a saturday!
I tried this on my first trip to 60 Hudson (a "famous" carrier hotel in Manhattan). We needed to remove a Cisco 2600 router. It's smaller than a pizza box. It fits in a backpack. I carried it under my arm.
As I step out of the elevator and into the lobby, the front desk person goes "you can't remove that equipment".
No worries, I anticipated this and have all the relevant removal paperwork. He is uninterested.
"you can't remove equipment using the passenger elevators"
But, I am in the lobby. The door is less than 20 steps. I already rode the elevator down.
"you must use the freight elevator. that is the law."
OK, I'll go back upstairs and use the freight elevator. Where is it?
"you can't operate it. you need an elevator operator"
OK, where should I wait for them? can you call one for me?
At this point, let me tell you it is Easter weekend.
"they do not work weekends, and it is a holiday weekend. they are $160/hr, minimum 4 hours, and it is double time on the weekend, plus time and a half for holidays"
OK, I'll just put it back. This piece of equipment is barely worth $400. Then I proceeded to go up the elevator, back to the datacenter, go inside, put the router in my backpack, and go back out.
And at the lobby was one of NYC finest, with one of the security people, who kindly asked me what was in my backpack. Then asked to search it. Do you have a warrant?
"I don't need a warrant. I'll just take you down to the precinct and open it there. You sure you don't have any weed in there, Mr. California?"
I went back up, put the router in the cage, went back downstairs, and used every ounce in my body not to flip the building security and his cop buddy the bird, akimbo style.
Man, every time I get annoyed by something in Chicago, New York steps in to make me feel better.
What does the guy at the front care anyways? Do the union guys pass him a $50 every time they cajole somebody in to using the freight elevator for something stupid?
I probably would have just waited till the cop left, went to the nearest shipping store, bought a box, put 5 bucks in postage on it, and addressed it to myself. Now they can't open it without exigent circumstances or a warrant.
I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice or anything, but it's probably the next best thing to giving them the finger.
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.)