On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 2:12:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2016 10:46:09 -0700 (PDT), Its Me
wrote:


NYC? Haha... that has to be the most tightly union controlled place on the planet. When we shipped equipment into the city, we had to have it off-loaded outside the city to a union driven truck for it to be accepted for delivery at the site. I had to point at connection points in a wiring frame so a union guy could connect the test equipment. Then he'd hand it to me so I could run the test, then I'd hand it back to him with instructions on where to connect it next, just because I wasn't allowed to touch the wiring frame. All because "they'd worked hard to secure their jobs, and they were going to protect them", or some such BS. The guy couldn't do my job, but it took him, the steward overlooking us, and me to do what I could do by myself.

I do have to say the guys ran the wiring very neatly. Too bad it was full of wiring errors I had to identify and tell them how to correct.

No, Chicago has New York beat. The IBEW managed to totally ban non
metallic wiring methods for 70 years. You even had to run wire in
metal pipe in 1 and 2 family. They have backed off a little but it is
still very restrictive.
When I was in the Ed Center in Chicago as a temp instructor we wanted
to move some machines around. I just started pulling floor tiles and
dropping cables. The ed center manager freaked out. We needed to call
in a few IBEW members to watch. They sat there drinking $25 an hour
coffee (in the early 80s) while we did all the work but they had to be
there. There is no way we would actually let them under our covers.
They used to let them pull the cables but they broke too many so we
needed as many feather bedders as we had people doing the work. If
someone just came over and touched a cable, we needed to bring in
another electrician. When I asked "why even let them know we did it",
they told me the union cleaners or other maintenance people would rat
them out and they would strike the whole building.
Maybe that idiocy helped to form my negative image of unions. Bear in
mind I grew up in the shadow of the Teamsters international.

A friend I worked with lived in a suburb of Chicago for a while. Says that PVC water pipes are not allowed up there, so when you had an issue you had to call a union plumber to sweat the copper.. Also told me about the house wiring having to be in conduit.

What a crock.