Crane collapse in NYC, a couple of questions.....

[ghostsinthemachine]

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]

1. If you see a giant inflatable rat in any of the pix, then it was not

NYC unions love to troll nonunion contractors by bringing out the giant rat. And I do mean giant. Think Macy's parade.

[LiberalElite]

7. I do love that rat - it's

VERY eye-catching. It could be considered an icon around here.

[former9thward]

2. They are union.

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. Wow, good money..... (thanks)

Highly specialized work though. This link only speaks of the pay, I assume that you know the company involved is a union company?

[former9thward]

4. All major construction work in NYC is union.

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]

6. Good reality....

Not out here, so I had to ask.....

[R.A. Ganoush]

8. Any additional info on how they came to that number without having to register for the site?

The BLS only lists crane operators as making 147k on the high end. I can't imagine they have 350k worth of benefits.

[former9thward]

10. BLS does not include overtime.

And doubletime and a half on holidays, etc. But their information came from the New York crane companies.

[R.A. Ganoush]

19. Thanks for your reply

N/T

[edhopper]

9. it's a bullshit union bashing article from wsj.

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]

11. The New York Department of Labor disagrees with you.

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]

13. You are reading that wrong

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]

14. Can you cite where you learned that

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]

15. All major construction work in NYC is union.

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]

16. Edit - thanks.

[phylny]

20. Absolutely.

A relative of mine works for a very large construction company in NYC. They use only union workers and trades.

[1939]

5. Cranes are a delicate balancing act.

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]

12. Not sure about union (and the following is a little bit in the weeds)

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]

17. The crane company doesn't usually provide the operator. The operator is a union member.

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]

18. He was a good crane operator - I used to work shipyards and saw my share of crane accidents.

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