Posted on 11/03/2012 2:52:37 AM PDT by markomalley
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie bristled at reports Friday that an electricians’ union stood in the way of some utility workers who wanted to help restore power to victims of Hurricane Sandy. He would use his emergency-management powers, he said, to guarantee that nonunion crews could help restore his state’s electricity grid without interference.
“I’ve been on the phone with PSE&G [Public Service Electric and Gas Company], JCP&L [Jersey Central Power & Light] and the union, and they’ve all absolutely promised me they would never turn away a single worker whether they were union or nonunion, and I wouldn’t allow it,” Christie told reporters shortly after 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon.
“I would invoke my powers under the Disaster Control Act to prevent that from happening, but they’ve assured me we don’t have to.” (RELATED: NJ utility denies turning away nonunion electric crew volunteers from Ala.).
But a spokesman for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t reply to emails asking whether his boss would take a similar hard line. A spokeswoman for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo similarly didn’t return phone calls asking the same question.
Christie said Friday that “there was one incident of this in Seaside Heights” since Superstorm Sandy hit.
“First of all, the workers never came to New Jersey, okay? They weren’t turned away when they got here. They heard that New Jersey was a union state, coming from Alabama. When they stopped in Virginia, they called to see what they would do and they were given bad information.”
Christie said his state’s major utilities and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) “have all said they do not have that requirement.”
The Daily Caller had published a report more than an hour earlier about electric utility crews from central Florida that idled for two days instead of working on Long Island, while their managers dealt with the union’s demands.
“It turns out there was a 300-page contract that the union controlling LIPA [the Long Island Power Authority] wanted everybody to sign first,” the crewman told TheDC. “We don’t have time for that. We’ve got guys ready to go. You need lawyers for this.” (RELATED: Ala. utility, Fla. crewman blame electricians’ union for interfering with Hurricane Sandy relief)
An IBEW spokesman told TheDC on Friday that ”the IBEW did not send the documents” the Florida crew’s managers described, “nor did any of our locals.”
But he didn’t reply when asked if he had communicated with all 273 locals in the union districts where Sandy’s impact was felt. Those include 20 IBEW locals in New Jersey, 48 in New York, 10 in Connecticut and 52 in Pennsylvania.
A few hours after Christie spoke, TheDC reported on another case — this one involving an electric co-operative in Georgia whose workers were turned away from New York because they weren’t union members.
Neither of those cases involved New Jersey, but Christie threatened to invoke the authority he holds under New Jersey law if it became necessary. The state’s Civilian Defense and Disaster Control Act gives the governor broad power to control “utility repair squads” and other volunteer agencies in times of crisis.
Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts told TheDC that both ”union and nonunion crews” are “at work right now in New Jersey, restoring power.”
He said he believed those nonunion crews included some from outside New Jersey, but conceded he “would need to confirm that.”
Roberts reiterated Christie’s vow to bring utility companies to heel if nonunion workers weren’t welcomed into the Garden State. But he stopped short of saying the governor would apply the same level of aggressiveness to the IBEW.
“It would be absolutely premature for me to talk about what the governor would or wouldn’t do” in the absence of more proof, Roberts told TheDC.
“We’re always open to evaluating new information.”
Fat boy needs to explain why he was arm-in-arm with Obama the week before the election.
If Romney loses in a very close one...Christie has some accounting to do.
Christie is not finished nor did he jump the shark. He put his citizens of New Jersey at the top of his list. If he has snubbed the president, he would have looked just as foolish as the electrical workers rejecting non-union help. You have to remember, we become partyless Americans at the time of disasters, we have proven this time and time again.
Obviously, the greedy union scum thinks of this storm tragedy as “over time.” If they can make it last four or five months, that’s extra money in their pockets, no matter if the elderly and the young children die in their cold dark homes.
If you tried, you couldn’t come up with worse p.r. than this for the unions of America. No wonder the civilized men from the South turned around and went home rather than sign a 300-page contract with these union thugs. Back in the good old days, however, before they left, they would have beat the **** out of the union thug who called them “scabs.”
No one said to snub the President, but Christie gushed all over him and made it sound like all was well now in NJ after he and the President got their photo ops surveying the beach front damage. Tell that to the people in NJ without food, clothes, and water and no place to live.
If anything FEMA sounds like it has gone down hill since Katrina. And the unions of NJ are going to get in the way of the clean up big time.
I know about hurricanes and have been in a few of them. Also been in a major flood. Christie doesn’t sound up to the job. Time will tell how NJ fares.
That would be about par for the course as far as the audio on Sean Hannity’s radio show is concerned. Something about the audio simply didn’t ring true, at least in terms of its relevance to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
I was watching tv last night and they were warning people about hiring non - licensed people to cut up their downed trees or fixing their roofs.
Now, my husband is an electrician and he is licensed in our state, if he were to go to new york to work he wouldn’t be legal and so turned away but with 25 years experience and having had his own business he could help. Plus he grew up with a chainsaw in his hands. In our state there is no such thing as being licensed to take a tree off your roof and so again he wouldn’t be “legal” to take that tree down so he wouldn’t be wecomed. according to this program anyway. what is wrong with people? guess if they are going to be that picky then good luck waiting for the new yorkers who have licenses to get that huge ass tree off your roof!
At one time, unions may have served a purpose, but they have long outlived any such. Times have changed, and unions are a big part of the problems.....not part of the solutions.
That’s it blablabla partyless .
Stop singing that stupid song when it is OBVIOUS that Obama and MSM used Sandy to take a posture of president and “savior” , to stop the campaign , take all the media spots as actually he did NOTHING AT ALL but only talking .
Wake up and get real instead of repeating fairy tales.
“Obama didn’t help NJ one bit.”
But NJ, in the form of Christie, helped Obama, providing him with photo ops, credibility, and endorsement. Then Obama was off partying with his glamor friends.
It’s a lot like that graphic: “When Obama called for help to get bin Ladin, the SEALs came. When the SEALs called Obama for help in Benghazi, they were ignored.”
As narcissists do, it’s all about Obama. The entire world exists to further the narcissist’s best interests. It’s always a one-way street for them.
Finished at the national level.
"On Strike Verizon union thug tries to intimidate replacement workers
Only in the minds of reactionaries who are intolerant of political reality. Hard line ideaology is what has defeated Barack Obama
“Chris Christie and Obama Are In Love Now”
O’Reilly said they were doing the Lambada (the “forbidden dance”).
Has anyone heard Ann Coulter comment on Christie’s recent activities? Is she still gushing over how wonderful he is, as she did during primary season?
“If anything FEMA sounds like it has gone down hill since Katrina.”
I wouldn’t say that FEMA has gone down hill. Depends on what your definition of going down hill is. If aiding an area of the country that was hit following a crisis, I would say it went down hill. However, to aid the government in combating an uprising it seems well equipped. I say that with the 100K+ body bags they bought and the mountains of ammunition they purchased.
I tend to think that was more a warning about unscrupulous people posing as contractors and ripping people off. This happens in many places all the time but in a disaster they really crawl out of the woodwork. We recently had a spate of this in PA, well before Sandy BTW, mostly preying on gullible elderly folks. These people are usually from out of state, are not licensed or insured or experienced, but they pressure and convince the home owner to pay for some or all of the work upfront with no written contract (not that it would be worth the paper it’s written on if they did), and then they either don’t finish the work or do a crappy job, sometimes even causing more damage and then after getting cash or a check up front they disappear. As I understand, a lot of these folk are “Travelers”, i.e. Gypsies.
If your husband wanted to volunteer to help, it would be advisable to do so through a legitimate relief org. If he were to offer services for money, then yes, he’d probably need to be licensed in that state.
Christie should run that by his suck-buddy Obama.
Bottom line: Unions rejected aid from non-union volunteer workers. Christie did not anticipate this.
He didn't have to snub the president, neither did he need to figuratively kiss his ring and bathe him in praise that is proving to be premature and which may have damaged Romney's chances in an election of monumental importance.
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