Wasn't Boston's Big Dig disaster of a large complex construction project all union labor? As well it was racked with cost and time overruns while having low quality work.

Sorry but that would be a four letter word for them... WORK. They would rather protest than work dont ya know!

Are the union US autoworkers more productive than the non-union US autoworkers?

I'm not necessarily sure that the guys near my building are union... I will check it out tomorrow.

And as the original poster, I will confirm that my primary purpose for the post was just to describe the shock at reading their flyer, which made no valid argument and provided no salient facts to prove ANYTHING to me, besides that whoever wrote them feels that the value of their parent company's ASSETS has something to do with what wages they deserve.

If they ARE union, I would assume that an organized union would have somebody like a PR guy who would write these flyers. If that is the case, he should be fired.

The bank has a trillion dollars in ASSETS? Ahhh, no.

If they mean the value of the assets under their control is a trillion, maybe. Perhaps the value of the outstanding loans they've made. That's not the banks money.

Glad you asked. By far the best way to lose money on a construction project is to plan and manage it inadequately. That, according to my understanding, is what happened on the Big Dig. It is also what has happened to American auto makers. We can pretend that workers messed the project up, but in nearly twenty years of doing my job I have never heard a construction company reach this conclusion. Someone else might. Like for example, somebody sitting in an office somewhere, chatting on the Internet. But nobody in the construction industry is very confused. The difference between a good/successful project and a bad one is planning and project administration/management. Blaming disasters on the workers is like blaming your poor track times on the track. "The track has too many corners......"

Double post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I was in Boston, the consensus was that it was the government and the companies underbidding to get jobs and then having overruns that caused the debacle. I think that was a typical example of what happens with these government projects where they put stuff out to bid and the lowest bidder (not the BEST bidder) gets the job.

Trump's first book (before he wrote like 100) "the art of the deal" talked about this. There was an ice skating rink that NYC had been messing around with building for years, with the project getting messed up again and again because of this ludicrous bidding process. Trump bought it and got it done in 6 months. Sure, he's tooting his own horns here a bit, but still, I think he had a valid point.

How about that?! I read a book and used it for something! Maybe this here boy dun got smarter.

You are correct. The public works construction industry is frustrating. Agencies are mandated to award projects to the lowest bidder. The lowest bid very often does not cover the contractors' costs. Contractors hope/expect to make up the difference on change orders. That is the game. It would be beneficial to taxpayers if public agencies were permitted to use their judgement and consider qualitative factors. Private works are allowed to do this, of course.

I like the union = superior analogy. The aircraft company I work for is in union negotiations right now, in less than two weeks their contract is up. The behavior of the labor guys is amazing to me. For the last several months they've all been wearing shirts proclaiming their "Strength to Strike". In the last few weeks, break times in the plant have consisted of whistles, airhorns, and yelling. The purpose of this, I'm not so sure. All I know is if I chose to act like an immature child at my job, I'd be fired within hours. Yet in their logic, this should yield them better pay and benefits.

It's funny, because I spent years doing blue collar work before going back to college. If I didn't like a job or company, I quit and found another job. These are people with no formal education, mostly unskilled, getting paid very well with benefits to drive rivets. If they're so valuable and unhappy, find a new job! In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how I'll get to work if they strike. Last time there were numerous accounts of vandalism to cars in the parking lot.:mad:

In an amusing sidebar, last year another local aircraft company went on strike, and the salary employees were put on the floor doing assembly. In station productivity improved something like 40% with untrained managers and engineers doing the work. Horray for unions!

So I wonder how it ended up not working that way in the public sector? Seems to go totally against common sense to take large, complex public works projects and give them to whomever offers to do it the cheapest.

Yeah but..... In private business, it would be okay for me to award a contract to my brother-in-law, even if his bid were not the lowest. You wouldn't want me doing that as a public servant. We can't tolerate graft or impropriety in government administration, and laws are the firmest way to ensure against those things. A better system is possible, but qualitative considerations take more time to understand, and the checks and balances that would be necessary to ensure against graft would require more staff. And here's the deal: People hate gubmit so badly that they will not buy into the truth that two additional staff people is still a bargain if it means we can manage these projects more efficiently that way. Even though it would save you money, it cannot be done. Because people (some who post here regularly, BTW), will NOT give their permission for gubmit to have the freedom of a private business. And then of course...they whine and moan about gubmit inefficiency.

You must be talking about aerospace machinists. Construction workers are not unskilled. At least, nobody who understands construction work believes that.

Interestingly though.....we have an aerospace company right here in Seattle. Their new plastic airplane is behind schedule and continuing to fall further behind. The reason? Sit down for this. The company had decided to farm out the fabriciation of many sub-parts. To non-union fabricators. Those non-union fabricators failed to deliver.

However, one can not definitively say whether union fabricators WOULD have delivered.

I can't imagine either entity (union or non-union) would want to "blow it" on a contract with Boeing. That's a big client and not one you want to screw the pooch with.

While not as much experience, I do have first hand experience with Unions. I word for a mechanical company after college (I was a plumber), and we were a non union shop. The porject I was one was for a large hospital remodel and build out. We worked with some Union guys, and some not. Some of them were great workers, typically the older, more seasoned ones. The newer guys, not so much.

In the Security Industry I deal with Unions as well. I have dealt with the UAW, and more recently a service union. I feel the service union actually has good intentions, but we will have to see.

Bill

Well, the fact remains that these subcontractors are continuing to report more and more delivery delays. I do not know but can guess where this major aerospace company could get examples of how much work a crew can be expected to accomplish in a given period of time. That would be their own workforce, which is union. The subcontractors did not meet that expectation.