Posted on 01/05/2011 9:06:22 AM PST by Freepmanchew
I grew up in NY and never doubted that the Sanitation Workers Sabotaged the Storm Cleanup.
This was reason #6 on why I fled NY 2 decades ago.
I am a native NY’er from Long Island and still live here. We’ve had worse blizzards. We saw more snow in a shorter duration just last year. The cleanup after that was about what we expect. All main roads were plowed within 12 hours of the end of the storm. Most side streets were plowed at least once within a day. When I saw the blizzard response this time there was never a doubt in my mind the slowness was intentional.
despicable. even if their supervisors said stand down, you’d think they would have the human decency to help their fellow NY’rs.
This is in no way meant as a defense of the union slugs not working in NYC. Having begun that way, are there no plows privately operated in NY? When I plow to my local accounts, I often have to plow the road getting to them because otherwise I wouldn’t get to those customers. It amazes me that nobody pulling out of their house with the plow on their (Chevy/Ford/GMC/Dodge?) truck could take the time to plow out their own street on the way to/from work.
My first hourly wage job was as a seasonal parkman for the NYC Parks Department while I was in high school.
I was assigned to the grass cutting crew. Our daily routine went something like this:
08:00 - 08:10 Sign in for 8:00 (paper blotter)
08:05 - 09:00 Morning Coffee Break
09:00 - 09:50 Load equipment on trucks
09:05 - 10:00 Drive around aimlessly
10:00 - 10:45 Coffee break at local diner
10:45 - 11:00 Drive to worksite
11:00 - 11:30 Cut some grass
11:30 - 13:30 Lunch break back at garage after driving around aimlessly
13:30 - 14:30 Drive around aimlessly
14:30 - 15:00 Cut some grass
15:00 - 15:45 Stand around drinking beer and regaling summer help with tales of sexual exploits
15:45 - 16:30 Drive around aimlessly
16:30 - 16:35 Arrive at garage and unload equipment
16:35 - 17:00 Kill time
17:00 - 17:00 Sign out
Let. Me. Be. Clear: I am not exaggerating. Now, since like every other red-blooded American boy, I had made money cutting my neighbors’ grass using my father’s lawnmower and my father’s gas, for about $0.50 an hour, the opportunity to make a buck-sixty an hour using the City’s equipment and gas seemed like a great opportunity. On my first afternoon on the job, (at 16 when the legal drinking age in New York was 18) I declined the offer to stand around and drink beer. One of my co-workers then proceeded to kick the muffler off my lawnmower and told me it was “defective equipment” and I could no longer use it. I then was treated to free beer and tales his macho sexual exploits.
Wow, just amazing. I have heard similar things from many many union workers. Is it any wonder all our government agencies are so inefficient?
In Massachusetts, the bulk of plowing is done by private contractors. The legislature makes a fuss about paying them (especially if there’s a Republican governor) and they are lucky to get paid by July. Under Romney (especially) and other Republican governors, they do a pretty good job. Dukakis was a disaster. We had a bigger storm in 2003 than the Blizzard of ‘78 and no one hardly noticed, because Romney plowed the friggin’ roads. The State was litterally shut down for a week in ‘78. Litterally.
The first blizzard under Coupe De Val, the roads were packed with washerboard ice. Seems Coupe had appointed a Greenie highway commissioner who thought the world would be better off if everyone just took a few snow days every year. Since he wanted to survive politically, D’eval disabused her of that notion.
(Coupe De Val because Coupe traded in the Governor’s Lincoln Police Interceptor for an Escalade, claiming Lincoln no longer made the Police Interceptor, a claim which Ford’s Lincoln division marketing department vigorously denied. He later backed off that story.)
BTW, in the private sector to get a one hour grass cutting gig, I had to spend about an hour knocking on doors, meaning grass cutting paid about $0.25/HR in the private sector and you had to bring your own equipment and supplies. Snow shoveling (by hand) paid better, mostly because you had more motivated clients, but the work was harder.
Freeper legal eagles - could the union be liable for contributing to the death(s)?
This was in 1967. When the City went bankrupt in 1975, my first thought was, “Why’d it take so long?” Cured me of socialism for life.
As someone who grew up in Hudson County, NJ I can believe it. Unfortunately the internet, combined with cell phone cameras, is changing the way these slugs do their thing.
Too easy to end up on YouTube...
The fellow NYers are just the host for these parasites; class envy has been drilled into these sh!ts for a long time. It has nothing to do with performing a task or earning an honest wage, but more to do with grabbing a piece of the billions of dollars that change hands in the city all the time.
I know a firefighter who described having furloughed firemen show up to fires simply because their co-workers were at risk if they didn’t (short-staffed); they weren’t paid (forced to take off 1 or 2 days a month) but that had nothing to do with it. You’ll not see anything like that in NYC.
“It amazes me that nobody pulling out of their house with the plow on their (Chevy/Ford/GMC/Dodge?) truck could take the time to plow out their own street on the way to/from work.”
Do that more than once and the union thugs will flatten your tires; then you’ll lose your other accounts as well. That truly is the mindset here: We’ve attached ourselves to you as the host, and ANYTHING that might cost us that livelihood will be attacked most aggressively (be it automation, competition, whatever).
Lose his truck? What an interesting system. Snow is blowing in here and I’ll probably plow the entire road in the subdivision just to get back and forth.
Now you know how Unions are destroying the country. When they get laws past that says all work must be done by them, anyone else doing it are breaking the law, not just violating union rules, but actually breaking local government laws.
The max fine for such an infraction is jail, fine, and a loss of the weapon used to violate the law with. In this case the truck used to plow the snow the union has an agreement with the locality to plow.
Libloather, I see your thread on this subject just got pulled but it didnt give a reason, I was in the middle of a comment there.
Slow New York Snow Removal Probed by U.S. Prosecutors (for fraud - next storm on the way), (Libloather, pulled thread)
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