Policing The Police

[Big RR]

Surprised? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I'm sure it depends upon the terms of the contract.

[Guinevere]

No, its a statutory right.

[Big RR]

Now that surprises me, but I really don't know all that much about municipal contracting.

I do recall early on working with the railroads when I first got out of college in the safety area; whenever any new safety regulation was passed, however well intentioned or boneheaded it was, you could be sure the union would challenge it as a change in the terms and conditions of employment; the worst think it did was that to the rank and file, safety regs were routinely treated as annoyances which should be ignored ("pain in the ass rules" was the general comment), and I'm sure some accidents and injuries occurred. But it showed me how management and labor can act when they are always at odds with each other.

[MajGenl.Meade]

In New York City each camera will be required to have an escort of three ICG union members and the cop will not be allowed to turn it on though he or she may turn it off if the other three are on lunch break.

[Big RR]

I ran into that once at Javitt's center when I was chairing meeting; the plug for the overhead projector (it was a while ago) didn 't reach to the outlet and we requested an extension cord and got one (after about an hour and 20 minutes after we were supposed to have started. The guy just left the plug and said someone would be in to connect it; when he didn't arrive in 10 minutes I plugged it in myself and began; about 20 minutes later I was called outside by the facilities manager who said the electrician filed a grievance because I plugged it in myself and warned me not to do anything like that again; it's true, you just can't make something up like that.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I used to work for a company shipping Cobalt-60 sources for teletherapy around the world. New York City was the worst place to ship to. Everywhere else in the world, the box travelled on a common carrier to the premises of a rigger, who'd take it to the hospital during a scheduled down-time.

Not NYC. The rigger had to meet the box before it crossed a bridge and then only after midnight and before 5 a.m. The police and fire dept. had to escort the rigger over the bridge and all the way to the hospital. Since the depleted source returning to the factory also had to go back between midnight and 5 a.m., the entire swap had to be done between those hours or the hospital would be closed for a day waiting for the following evening.

The next part was to get the NY unions to send three guys (yes, 3) out to the hospital at 1:15 a.m. because neither the rigger nor our own techs were allowed to transport things inside the hospital - only the union could do that. But of course, the union guys not only didn't want to push the wheeled source box, they didn't want to get within 20 feet of it. Some nights the rigger and our guy had to spend a lot of time negotiating with the 3 guys to allow them to move the box. Eventually "OK. As long as we can watch from a safe distance that'll be all right" They got double time for staying as far away from doing their job as they could.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I encountered similar situations in Las Vegas at the NAB conventions. We needed the electrical union, the carpenters union, the union that covered network connections.....
Wonder we were able to get the booth up at all.