Judging from a recent Nova I watched on current advancements in nuclear technology, he should pack up his cranes and move shop to China. China seems more willing to try industry changing tech these days.
Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
281–290 of 312 posts
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Kiiiinnnnda. People make bad decisions You can't outlaw bad decisions - but it seems that some people will never get tired of trying...
You can outlaw bad decisions. That's the whole point of laws.
Try outlawing tobacco and see what happens (hint: Prohibition).
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#283The New York Department of Buildings response to this article (June 2016) : Skypicker presented the department with plans for a small, truck-mounted crane... However, when we inspected the Skypicker in use at a construction site, we found something significantly different: The crane was attached to a building slab, and appeared to be a hodgepodge of parts from other cranes, mounted on a homemade, untested base. http:…
Given that multiple inspectors examined the machines personally and decided it was OK, I'm skeptical of this assessment.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that cities don't want buildings torn down every 10 years because it's cheaper for the buyer to just rebuild from the ground up than to fight what essentially amounts to a heap of technical debt. Well-constructed buildings can last centuries: future-proofing is a pretty big deal.
Why would a city care? That's just more permitting money and local jobs.
Because construction sites are ugly and noisy.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
I think it's just a lot more nuanced than that. Unions have done amazing things to increase worker pay and benefits up from horribly inadequate levels, and to increase safety standards. But they've also don't some pretty bad anti-competitive, rent-seeking, protectionist things as well. Getting rid of them certainly isn't the answer, but letting them do bad things is unacceptable as well. No one is saying "everything…
No one is saying "everything that unions do is bad and they should go away". But it's equally naive to suggest that unions never do bad things at all.
So why is it that we get something like a thousand "look at this CORRUPT OVERPAID LAZY RENT-SEEKING UNION" stories for every "this union did something kind of OK, I guess" story?
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#286Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me correct that slightly: some unions have rules that add significant cost. It's unfair to blame the entire concept of unions for a small number of dysfunctional unions.
Wrong. This is completely normal in America, and it's entirely fair to blame all unions for it. The catch is, it's an American phenomenon; it doesn't apply to unions in other, better-run countries like Germany.
I live in America. I work in NYC. The unions here are a significant problem.
Unions in NYC are a protection racket. They don't do crap for worker safety or fair workplace rules. They are a front for legal extortion and add complexity and cost to nearly everything they touch.
Story time: Going in and out of telecommunications buildings there were scales by the doors to the rooms with equipment. If a bag, device, or piece of equipment weighed over 35 pounds, you needed to have a union member carry that piece of gear for you into the facility.
Forget the nature of the equipment, the fact that the equipment might have wheels in a case. The NEED for a worker wasn't something that could be discussed. The rule was: if it was over 35#, you needed to make sure that a union worker carried it in.
Troubleshooting a problem with a circuit and it's 12:00? Lunchtime! If you're a union worker, you just drop the phone where it is and walk away to go have lunch. Everything stops because the union rules specify that no work can be done during specified break times.
Please note that unions once served a vital and important purpose in this country: they protected workers against horrific abuses by management. The problem is that those abuses are now largely confined to industries where there has never been a solid union presence OR they've gone overseas to escape the unions.
In the meantime, unions here have hurt worker mobility, frustrated workplaces, and generally made everything worse for all parties by sheer incompetence.
Remember when Twinkies disappeared from the markets? Unions. Remember when US Airways nearly ran itself into the ground? Unions.
Unions need to adapt or die. My personal experience with unions is that they have hurt my career (when I was represented by a union) more than they've protected me.
And NYC is a special case of all of the above stupidity.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#288Earlier 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…
OK, so let's really do this, even though the other commenter got downvoted into oblivion just for daring to check the math.
The claim is they make 75.91/hr when in the crane, 73.91 when not. Let's say they spend 6 hours a day in the crane, 2 hours not in the crane; that's 603.28/day. Five days a week is 3,016.40. 52 weeks a year would be 156,852.80.
So we're at $156,852.80/year from 8-hour days of work. We need to somehow get to "half a million". By which I mean we need to come up with $343,147.20 in overtime. The quote doesn't say what the overtime rate is, but traditionally it's time and a half; At a behind-the-crane rate of $75.91, overtime would be $113.86/hour. The engineer would then need to work "only" 3,013 hours of overtime a year in order to hit that "half a million" target. Or 2,135 hours of overtime a year in order to hit the $400k another commenter suggests below.
There are 8,760 total hours in a (non-leap) year and we've already used 2,080 of them accounting for 8-hour weekday shifts. So our engineer has 6,680 hours in the year left in which to work either 3,013 or 2,135 hours of overtime so we can bash him for making too much money. If he works an 8-hour shift every Saturday and every Sunday at the overtime rate, that only gets us 832 hours of overtime. We still need to find between 1,303 and 2,181 additional hours of overtime. That's an additional 3.5 - 6 hours per day every day for the year.
So... "many union members earn half a million dollars a year". To get to that number, at the quoted wages, they would have to be working 14-hour shifts every day. Not "every week day with two week's vacation". 14 hours every day: 7 days a week, 365 days a year. To get to the $400,000 estimate the comment below thinks is reasonable, they'd only need to work 11.5 hours a day all 365 days of the year. And that's probably a low estimate: I got that number by assuming the engineer spends 6 hours of every working weekday 8-hour shift behind the crane at the higher rate, and 100% of overtime hours behind the crane at the higher rate. If he's spending any more than 2 hours per weekday not behind the crane he needs to work even more hours since he's paid a lower rate then.
I hope nobody actually believes that these guys are genuinely working 11-14 hours a day, 365 days a year, or that if they are it would be wrong to massively compensate them for it.
Of course, someone will point out that I didn't account for the $32.50/hour in "benefits". But how can I? What does that mean? How many jobs have you had where you said "oh, my rate is low but I also count an hourly benefit amount as part of my wages"? Do you genuinely, truly, honestly and actively make sure you include the cost of any employer matching on your health insurance or 401(k) as dollar value and lump it into your salary? I know I don't.
But let's run with it anyway. Let's suppose the engineer gets 100% of his health plan covered by these "benefits", and what's more let's go high on it and assume that his health plan costs $5,000/month. If we only have him work 8-hour shifts 7 days a week we still need to make up a lot of money out of overtime or non-health-plan benefits:
weekday wage = (75.91 * 6) + (73.91 * 2) = 603.28
weekend wage = (75.91 * 1.5) * 16 (hours in two 8-hour shifts) = 1,821.84
Full week = 5 * weekday + weekend = 4,838.24
Full year of 8-hour shifts 7 days a week = 52 * 4,838.24 = 251,588.48
Add in $60,000 worth of health insurance = $311,588.48
To hit the "half a million" we still need to find nearly another $200,000. Specifically, we still need to find him 1,655 hours of overtime at this point. That's 4.5 hours a day in a 365-day year, so we're at 12.5-hour shifts, 365 days a year, to hit $500,000 in compensation.
A 401(k) doesn't help since his max contribution to that is $18,000/year, which is peanuts compared to the gap we need to make up to get him to $500,000.
But at this point I think we can safely say that something is very fishy with what you've quoted. And to reference my other comment, the reason this engineer isn't hanging out with other millionaires is that he can't because he spends 12.5 hours a day, all 365 days of the year, at work in order to get to that "half a million" wage you're attributing to him.
(except of course you know that the crane operators aren't really doing that, but that would sink the whole story...)
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wrong. This is completely normal in America, and it's entirely fair to blame all unions for it. The catch is, it's an American phenomenon; it doesn't apply to unions in other, better-run countries like Germany.
I live in America. I work in NYC. The unions here are a significant problem. Unions in NYC are a protection racket. They don't do crap for worker safety or fair workplace rules. They are a front for legal extortion and add complexity and cost to nearly everything they touch. Story time: Going in and out of telecommunications buildings there were scales by the doors to the rooms with equipment. If a bag, device, or pi…
> Remember when Twinkies disappeared from the markets? Unions.
That is total unmitigated bullshit.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/10/business/dealbook/how-the...
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
OK, so let's really do this, even though the other commenter got downvoted into oblivion just for daring to check the math. The claim is they make 75.91/hr when in the crane, 73.91 when not. Let's say they spend 6 hours a day in the crane, 2 hours not in the crane; that's 603.28/day. Five days a week is 3,016.40. 52 weeks a year would be 156,852.80. So we're at $156,852.80/year from 8-hour days of work. We need to so…
Why you'd go to the effort of doing all these estimates and just make up nonsensical multipliers is beyond me. Off-shift work is a little over 1.5x (this is non-overtime work that's not between 8 and 5), overtime is 2x. Weekend is 2x. Every overtime hour gets you a D stamp that is not insignificant in value.
All that information is public. I'm a little suspicious of a $500k crane engineer myself, but you managed to get everything wrong. If you missed half the stuff, and the half that was available in the article and in a two-minute Google, god knows what you're leaving out. I literally had the top result in my first search showing the wage card and here you're busy making up nonsensical numbers.