Not too long ago, I was doing a trade show at a convention center where my company had a booth and you know what that means, scores of pinky-ring wearing plug-uglies needed to be hired to do every little thing at ridiculous wages.
So at this convention center, there were two freight elevators at either end of the building to move gear up to the convention floor from the loading docks. So a team of union guys have our equipment moved to the freight elevator only to find out it is out of order.
Now you would think the logical thing to do would be to have everything moved down the hallway to the other freight elevator that was working. But that would be too simple.
The union guys just stood there and shrugged. Their job was done as far as they were concerned and they would need to get a work order if they were going to move everything (that was on wheels) down the hallway to the other elevator. I mean, I could have done this myself in about 10 minutes. But I wasn't allowed.
Meanwhile, the guy that was paid to run the elevator was just standing there. More on him later.
Finally, after a bunch of phone calls and learning that the elevator would likely not get fixed that day (it was on a Saturday), we were able to get the necessary paperwork and permissions to have the equipment moved to the other elevator. After everything is finally moved there, no elevator operator. Apparently he was at lunch or on break or something.
So I asked if we could just have the elevator operator from down the hallway - you know, the one that was standing by a broken elevator doing absolutely nothing - come on down the hallway and get us on our way. That seems logical, right?
"Oh no, no, no" I was told, "That is simply not allowed. That man was hired to run only THAT elevator and not THIS elevator."
So ludicrous as this sounds, we had to wait about a half hour for the other elevator guy to come shuffling back from wherever he was, and I do mean he was shuffling, while the other elevator guy was standing in front of a broken elevator down the hallway. Mind you that if I was by myself, I could have hit the button to call the elevator, pushed everything inside, gone to my floor and pushed it out inside of about 90 seconds tops.
True story and just another example of how labor unions have helped to strangle this economy. I have no doubt that such nonsense was behind this guy having to crawl off a plane. There were probably only certain people allowed by the union to move around a wheelchair.
Javits.
We had to hire a union carpenter in Chicago at McCormick Place (one hour minimum) to assist in setting up our show booth. Prefap pop-up modular thing. The old guy with a claw hammer didn’t have a clue. We found him a chair and he sat and watched us set up the display.
Oh man. I’m in Texas (of all places) and I work in the AV industry. Projectors, speakers, mics, lighting, etc. for big corporate events. One of the companies I work for uses a union, IATSE or something like that. Theatre stagehands union. Worthless people, mostly. If you have a job that requires three people, and you have only one of your regular freelances to do it, it takes 3-4 union hands to fill those 2 extra slots. They will forget everything you taught them on a gig this week, so a different gig next week requires teaching them the same basic crap yet again. It’s all seniority based, so even if you’re lucky enough to get a decent dude, you can’t request him or anything. Ridiculous. They have a set 15min break every hour or two, even if you’re in the middle of doing something. Leave cables half-run cause it’s break time. You can tell them to push cases, or maybe run cables. I’ve seen one dude run power backwards because he had no idea (or did it on purpose, I don’t know)...
The ONLY time I’ve had a good experience with a union is the local electrician’s union one of my buddies managed to get a job at. They actually have required training, certifications, and when you hire a guy, you know his capabilities and can be assured that he can actually do the job. Rare thing in the union world.