General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCrane collapse in NYC, a couple of questions.....
Was the crane company a union company? trying to find that out and hitting a dead end. Seems this is not all that infrequent. How about the others? Were they union contractors?
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)NYC unions love to troll nonunion contractors by bringing out the giant rat. And I do mean giant. Think Macy's parade.
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)VERY eye-catching. It could be considered an icon around here.
former9thward
(32,020 posts)And they make $500,000 a year in pay and benefits.
Crane Operators Top $500,000 in Pay, Benefits
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303936704576399563008284024
ghostsinthemachine
(3,569 posts)Highly specialized work though. This link only speaks of the pay, I assume that you know the company involved is a union company?
former9thward
(32,020 posts)I don't know anything about this particular company but I do know any project of this size in NYC is union. That is just the reality of it.
ghostsinthemachine
(3,569 posts)Not out here, so I had to ask.....
R.A. Ganoush
(97 posts)The BLS only lists crane operators as making 147k on the high end. I can't imagine they have 350k worth of benefits.
former9thward
(32,020 posts)And doubletime and a half on holidays, etc. But their information came from the New York crane companies.
R.A. Ganoush
(97 posts)N/T
edhopper
(33,587 posts)they are basing it on $80 an hour in pay and benefits, which is a bullshit number. And then estimate for 60 p/wk, 52 wks/yr. So massive overtime.
Salary.com, which looks at actual pay, puts it around $50,000 a year. With a few getting up to $80,000
former9thward
(32,020 posts)They say the average wage is $72,370 a year with experienced making an average of $87,680. NYC union crane operators make a lot more than the "average" and that is not counting overtime.
https://labor.ny.gov/stats/lswage2.asp#47-0000
edhopper
(33,587 posts)the $87,000 is for experienced union operators. Now some will make more, especially with overtime. i could see that going up to a little over the $100,000 range. I just used one source which was meant to be absolutely definitive.
My main point is the WSJ number of $500,000 is anti-union bullshit and simply not true. Both your source and mine show that is the case.
pintobean
(18,101 posts)the company involved was a union contractor? I searched yesterday, and couldn't find anything saying they were union, which usually indicates that they're not.
You're link to an 2001 anti-union bullshit WSJ article, which is behind a pay wall, is useless.
former9thward
(32,020 posts)If you don't want to believe that I can't do anything for you.
It turns out I can on edit:
The crane operator, Kevin Reilly, 56, was trying to lower the crane due to winds approaching 25 mph when it fell, Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a press conference at the site.
Bill Farrell, a spokesman for the International Union of Engineers Local 14, said that Reilly is a member of the organization. DOB records indicate that he has a class B hoisting machine operator license, which means that he can operate all cranes in New York City regardless of height.
http://therealdeal.com/2016/02/05/breaking-one-dead-15-injured-intribeca-crane-collapse/
pintobean
(18,101 posts)phylny
(8,380 posts)A relative of mine works for a very large construction company in NYC. They use only union workers and trades.
1939
(1,683 posts)I have witnessed a few crane accidents (smaller crawler and truck mounted cranes) which are mostly operator and supervisor error. A crane involves lifting high loads which must be balanced. Too much load and not enough counterweight or stabilization leads to disaster as does too little load and too much counterweight.
mike dub
(541 posts)But another thing I'm thinking about in this tragedy is, how extensively do crane companies look at advance weather forecasts --- daily, hourly? 'The news' said rising winds and gusts the morning of the collapse worried the crane crew and they started lowering the boom immediately. I'm guessing that the crane co. had forecasts inside and out, but i wonder how closely future forecasts (shifting "isobars" and stuff) are taken into account by the operators--- taking future changing wind direction and speed into account. If the previous day's forecast is questionable for the next morning, lower the boom at the end of work the day before. I'm doing some armchair quarterbacking here, so I hope this isn't too offensive.
I work in a tall building here in North Carolina, and sometimes a huge crane is assembled and raised (contracted/hired by a big cellphone carrier to add antennas or transmitters onto leased space on the top of our building) next to our building -- its boom is at least 400 feet long/tall, and it requires a smaller, more easily road-drivable crane to Assemble this monster crane-- and I'm only hoping that that crane crew also has all wind forecasts in hand for the several days that the thing is on site. They Are able to lower the boom each night, but I have no idea if that's even doable in Manhattan. Here they close off a huge entire side of our parking lots. And in our case it's not a longer term construction crane like the one in NYC.
Conditions can change, but weather is nothing to mess with with something that tall.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)He also made a successful attempt to get the crane to "lie down" along the street, rather than go crashing into buildings.
I'll be the first to say a lot of bullshit goes on in construction in large cities from the board room to the jobsite break area, and the trades are sometimes a part of that. But while it's impossible to eliminate every single human error in construction, union jobsites are demonstrably safer than nonunion, and every person on the site wants to go home alive at the end of the day.
haele
(12,660 posts)The negligence in this case would be in that work was going on way past the window of safety. That crane should have been in a secured state (both location and elevation/boom) a good two or three hours prior to the storm coming in, and if that wasn't possible (due to work hours/shift scheduling), it should have been secured the day before.
I don't blame the crane operator as much as I blame the site super or the crane dispatch. They knew the weather was coming in; a few tens of thousands of dollars in lost work aren't worth the lawsuits and fines when something like this would inevitably occur.
Haele