Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

crainsnewyork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 312 posts

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#191

Post by ubernostrum »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #184
CPLX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.

Comment offers examples (that many people in New York on his site have experienced) and you fire back with some nonsense about some kind of PR campaign? Consider the possibility that people have had awful personal experiences dealing with unions (we hired a part time guy to help out cleaning our office and the office management threatened to shut down our building access because we didn't use approved union labor) th…

OK, so the comment compares to Paris, Madrid and Barcelona. Consider that in France and Spain, there are labor unions which make even the US' strongest, most ruthless and overbearing unions look like weaklings.

If labor unions are the source of problems, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona would have the same problems but orders of magnitude worse. Yet the comment claims -- and note I'm not passing judgment on whether this is factual or not -- that Paris, Madrid and Barcelona do not have these problems.

And it most certainly is true that labor unions in the US have been targeted by ubiquitous, well-funded, vicious attack propaganda from those who feel that people pooling a resource to wield greater power and reap greater returns than they could individually is the highest, noblest and holiest human endeavor when the resource in question is capital, but is the very worst and lowest sort of corrupt vile leeching parasitism when the resource in question is labor.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#192

Post by SapphireSun »

gingerbread-man wrote: post #76
atom-morgan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when people advocate for programmers unionizing, I don't see why we'd be any different. There'd be people employed doing X, a programmer would make something to automate X, and "our" union would be trying to save their job.

Just throwing in another reason why programmer unions don't make a lot of sense: licensing. It makes sense to license electricians, crane operators, doctors, lawyers, and many other professions who do safety-critical work. Only a very small minority of programmers work on software that could actually hurt someone (at Boeing, Toyota, etc...). There's no reason to create a legal barrier to entry for programming.

Why would licensing be a barrier to unionizing? Surely a smaller licensed community is easier to unionize, but the whole idea is getting a lot of (skilled or unskilled) people together to bargain collectively when bargaining individually would be ineffective.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#193

Post by hinkley »

a_puppy wrote: post #133
ahoy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union acts in it's member's interests: "Terrible, we shouldn't allow this". Corporation acts in it's own interests: "Well you can't blame them for that".

I tend to think that monopolies are bad, whether corporations or unions. Local 14 is trying to be a monopoly. One of the best arguments I've heard for unions [0] is that a negotiation between workers and companies is usually very lopsided: a company can afford for an employee to quit, but a worker often cannot afford to get fired. A union is powerful enough to negotiate equally with companies. But in the case of Loca…

> For decades, the local has had control over the training of new crane operators—and therefore who can work on a job site.

That's a monopoly practice, right there.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#194

Post by ubernostrum »

arjie wrote: post #126
linkregister wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is expecting a $150k wage floor? Edit: the union mentioned in the article. (I hadn't read it). It appears you're generalizing this union to represent other unions. It's possible for one union to be exploitative while other ones to have merit. Just as some corporations behave responsibly while a few others blatantly disregard consumers and workers.

> The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B lays out the wage floor for its operators at $73.91 per hour. That’s $150,000 a year before overtime, plus benefits equal to $32.50 an hour. When the operator is behind the controls of a tower crane, he gets a $2-an-hour bump. On weekends, when cranes are moved, pay doubles. With overtime, many union members earn half a million dollars a year. The union in…

So where are all the engineers who work for a handful of years and then retire as millionaires? Where are all the crane operators rubbing elbows with their fellows at Davos?

I'll give you a hint: someone may trying to mislead you and inflame prejudices which have been carefully drilled into you over many years of media exposure.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#195

Post by sargun »

deelowe wrote: post #186
CPLX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.

Here's an example from my world: IT technicians were kicked out of their office building when the electrical contractors saw them crimping cat 5 for a network closet. That's how bonkers unions are.

At Equinix, and other datacenters, you can't plug in certain electrical equipment without a Union worker. Often times this can be done significantly cheaper by an independent electrician (or an intern with a little bit of courage).

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#196

Post by Fricken »

notgood wrote: post #156
CPLX wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to tell you this but there's no such thing as a car that can drive itself.

Oh my, I'm afraid they exist[0], and there are already NYC unions trying to ban them: http://readwrite.com/2017/01/17/new-york-ban-self-driving-tl... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHbMt6WDhQ8

Waymo is still developing the technology, they can only go 5000 miles on average without the need for human intervention. They're getting close, but they don't exist yet.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#197

Post by greglindahl »

sargun wrote: post #195
deelowe wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example from my world: IT technicians were kicked out of their office building when the electrical contractors saw them crimping cat 5 for a network closet. That's how bonkers unions are.

At Equinix, and other datacenters, you can't plug in certain electrical equipment without a Union worker. Often times this can be done significantly cheaper by an independent electrician (or an intern with a little bit of courage).

I've been an Equinix customer (50 racks for 4 years.) I'm OK with Equinix having to plug in my PDUs for me. That wiring is their responsibility. All I care about is how much it costs, and I really don't care about that either because I only pay it once. That makes the cost about zero relative to what I pay for space and power.

So, the reason I should care if their worker is union or not is... ?

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#198

Post by Jgrubb »

I'm sorry, but I steadfastly refuse to complain about the unions. All you NYC based software developers probably have no idea to what extent the overall high standard of living in the NE is largely due to so many laborers being able to make a good living doing something that isn't tech.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#199

Post by MaysonL »

vonmoltke wrote: post #139
rsync wrote: post #114

"In April 2014, City Councilman Ben Kallos, who received $2,500 over two elections from Local 14, introduced new legislation to prohibit climber cranes like the Skypicker from being classified as mobile cranes. The rule would treat the Skypicker like a tower crane, requiring it to carry more insurance and have a Class A operator." Wow. So, for the price of a laptop I could influence NYC politics and have a councilman…

People pay too much attention to the money. He wasn't "bought" with the $2500, he was "bought" with the guaranteed votes from union members for supporting it.

And the volunteers working for him rather than his opponent.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#200

Post by viraptor »

Retra wrote: post #170
viraptor wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought law is about forbidding harmful decisions, not bad ones? (At least in theory) Most of the stupid things you do to yourself, without affecting others are not regulated.

Bad decisions are bad because they are harmful. And most stupid things you do to yourself do affect others, and they are regulated according to the significance of the damage, not merely predicated on its existence.

I specifically qualified with not affecting others, because otherwise that would be a different discussion. Yet...
Post reply on HN