Friday, November 02, 2012

"Doing jobs unAmericans are unwilling to do..."

Allegedly, alert utility workers in New Jersey caught undocumented scabs who didn't have union certification trying to do work for less than scale and ran them off, protecting the livelihoods of thousands of Garden Staters shivering in their cold, dark houses...

Or, to put it another way, utility crews from the Heart of Dixie were informed that they weren't allowed to help turn the lights back on in New Jersey unless they were union members. There's no right to work in Jersey, not even to work at being a good Samaritan. Sorry, fellow Americans trapped behind enemy lines, we tried.

If this is true, it's positively infuriating and is the whole Red State/Blue State thing in a nutshell...

24 comments:

ZerCool said...

Ropes, trees, etc. And watch out for the lawsuit if someone can prove harm. "Grandma's O2 concentrator finally ran out of battery juice, and she died of COPD... because they wouldn't let non-union workers in."

GmbH said...

Wisconsin school teachers would be proud.

Bob said...

The Alabamans should have told the union thugs that they were coming to vote for Obama on Tuesday. You don't need any ID for that.

Anonymous said...

If this story is true and if I lived in Joisey, I'd be looking for the Union Label... with a baseball bat.

RE: Bob's 8:09 AM, November 02, 2012

LOL!

Old NFO said...

I'm sorry, but if I'd been those crews, I'd have turned around and went home... piss on them all...

Stuart the Viking said...


Union Thug: No powers gettin fixed unless we get a piece of the action.

Too bad this won't be a "teaching moment" for those people struggling along without electricity (they won't listen).

Unions are all about money. Money for the union that is. Sure there is the occasional contract negotiation, but really that can be handled through other means that are FAR cheaper than the union dues that people are forced to pay simply to be allowed to have a job. It is immoral to force people to pay money, simply to be allowed to work.

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Scott J said...

Since the crews turned away are from my state it's a lead story on the news here.

I believe it to be one of the most glaring examples that unions have far outlived their usefulness.

Reno Sepulveda said...

They kept telling us it was the perfect storm.

We took one look at the map Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and had to agree.

RevGreg said...

A buddy of ours was driving in from NYC to PA for one of our subgun shoots over the summer and had a tire blow out on his Acura on the Turnpike in Carjackistan. He called AAA, told them what car he had and that he needed a tire, they said they had one and could drive right out there and install it. Unfortunately, when he told them where he was, he found out that another towing outfit had purchased the rights to cover that section of the Jersey Turnpike so they couldn't help him. The outfit that did have the rights would only tow him to their facility and they didn't have the tire in stock so he had to get a hotel for the night and missed the shoot.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Well, let's not forget the THREE Generators and the Pallets of Water sitting in Central Park for all those poor suffering Marathon Runners this Weekend. But hey, what do you expect from a Mayor who told everyone to come into a City with no power, subways, gasoline, fresh water, dry tunnels, etc. Got to get that Sales Tax Revenue somehow, eh?

But Boy, you better not try to smuggle in a Big Gulp!

Steve Skubinna said...

Shelter, heat and utilities are meaningless without social justice. So long as a single worker works without paying union dues there is no justice.

Anonymous said...

It ain't necessarily so:

http://www.waaytv.com/news/local/article_a4982e5a-250e-11e2-904f-001a4bcf6878.html

Bram said...

The local news in NJ says not really true. Apparently a couple of municipal power companies (town owned), are enforcing the union rules.

The two big utilities here - PSE&G and JCP&L - have stated adamantly that they are taking all the help they can get and union cards are not required.

Grayson said...

I'm waiting for some news report stating something along the lines of, "union offices repeatedly firebombed," and every so-called "journalist" reporting about all of the "anti-Obama right wing terrorism" taking place just before the election.
If the New Jersey citizens want to do something about the problem, then I could offer a subtle suggestion:

Rope (tied into noose).
Tree (or lighting pole).
Corrupt Union Thug.
Assembly Required.

Rabbit said...

In another time I'd have said "Let the bastards freeze in the dark", but I'm trying really, really, really hard to grow a heart.

Gerry N. said...

As with most breaking internet news, I'll wait a day to begin believing it.

On the other hand if it comes from the usual alphabet suspects (ABC et al.) I won't ever believe it.

Been fooled too many times.

Tam said...

Bram,

So they're "refuting" the story about power companies in New Jersey turning away non-union help by saying "Well, it's only really two power companies in the state doing it, and they're small."

Er, I see. I think?

Bram said...

Tam - I agree that it is a technical qualification. On the other hand, I cannot worry what some commune of a rich town in Eastern NJ does with their money. (If I lived there and didn't have power I would be pissed.)

If PSE&G, who will hopefully have my power restored by the end of the weekend, was turning away contractors - they would quickly learn of my burning fury.

Andy said...

From orig article, IBEW states that union membership not required in times of crisis. Sounds to me like isolated butthurt up there.

Ian Argent said...

Being one of the affected folks; I'll have to give props to PSE&G and my local DPW crews. My street is just about literally the only one in the entire town where no trees and/or lines came down on it, the local distribution substation was down (and replaced by a mobile unit for the time being); the line feeding that substation was down, and the upstream substation may have been under water due to storm surge - the town it's in certainly is. The lights went out at approx 2000 hrs Monday (I had *just* finished cooking dinner, and had been unsure if the microwave was going to finish the defrost cycle for the protein), and came back on 1630 or so Saturday afternoon. The roads were passable enough by Tuesday that I could get out and drop off my emergency power kit (a deep discharge battery and an inverter) at a friends with power two towns over to charge overnight and stop by their local grocery store to pick up ice in a (futile) attempt to save the contents of the chest freezer.

The idiots who got butthurt by non-unions crews can freeze in the dark, though.

Justthisguy said...

Heh. I had an argument with the other housemate yesterday, who is even more of a drunkard than I am, on the Sandy damage. I quoted Tam's "September in Flarduh" remark at him, but he did not attend. After some yelling, I think I got through to him at last. I pointed out that they had plenty of warning there and should have either prepared or evacuated. I explained to him that the last time a hurricane went through there, lots of people evacuated, then returned home to find all of their stuff looted. That's why they stuck around, this time.

I bitch and complain about the overbearing badge-bearers around here all the time, but you know what? I refugeed to Atlanta for Wilma, and when I got back, all my stuff was still there.

There is something to be said for having hardass cops in a state of emergency. (as long as they are honest, and not looters themselves, as happened in New Orleans)

Ian Argent said...

There was a fair amount of prep work done, actually - the mobile substation I mentioned above was on-site as soon as it could be trucked in, so it had to have been staged pretty close. I understand those things are pretty rare. It's hard to prep for, e.g. (and not mine, thank God), your substations being under 3 foot of salty storm surge from day 1. Most of the power distribution network is above ground around here (unsure if that's the case in FL); and the transmission network is all aboveground. And I'm pretty sure we've got a lot more trees to take lines down than does FL. (They run power lines through trees around here, by necessity).

I've lived in Jersey 20 years in one place or another, and this is the worst the entire state has been hammered by weather in that time; all the closest examples I can think of were snowstorms which closed roads but didn't generally wash away entire towns or blow down trees enough to fill Sherwood Forest.

I've been ignoring the national media in favor of the local Patch and social media (which, admittedly, is nothing new). The "pulse" of that is pretty optimistic outside of the shore communities, who are, while not used to this, at least aware of what a storm can bring.

In some ways I got off easier than in Irene, because there wasn't any rain to speak of and I'm far enough from shore that there wasn't any storm surge. My basement leaks like a sieve (something else they don't have in FL) and has there been any significant water, I'd have been hard-pressed to shelter in place.

I think Tam pointed out earlier that panic sells papers - don't go by news reports to get an idea of what people actually think; most of us are moving along; like the chinese food restaurant or the deli on the corner who were both open for cash-only business Tuesday by generator.

The most fascinating thing, to me, was that I had internet service via cell-phone (spotty, admittedly) the entire time. Voice service was predictably poor, but SMS went through. BTW, the next time someone asks you what testing is good for, mention that it takes up way less resources on the network and the phone than does a voice call; making it more reliable and less power hungry.

Justthisguy said...

P.s. Said other housemate gets all of his info from the MSM. In fact, the first thing he did when he moved in was to buy Satellite TV so he could watch sports.

I am ashamed to say that I watched a pro football game with him on his TV. I think that's the first football game I've ever watched all the way through while not wearing a band uniform, and I'm in my seventh decade on this planet.

Cheesy said...

Ultimately, if we are to survive, we're going to have to cut them out and cut them off.