"Dear Ed,
I'm a high school dropout, have no marketable skills, but I feel entitled to
earn $400 an hour. What kind of career path could you recommend?
Sincerely,
Unworthy but
Entitled"
Well, Unworthy,
I'm glad you asked that. It turns out I have just the job for you:
performing largely
unskilled labor building subway tunnels in New York City!
An accountant
discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms
under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
The budget
showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as
part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island
Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to
be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any
reason for the other 200 people to be there.
“Nobody knew
what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael
Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction... “All we knew is they
were each being paid about $1,000 every day.”
The estimated
cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has
ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track —
seven times the average elsewhere in the world.
Along with
interviews with contractors, the documents reveal a dizzying maze of jobs, many
of which do not exist on projects elsewhere.
There are
“nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to
supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time
when they needed frequent lubrication. Generators and elevators must have
their own operators, even though they are automatic.
The agreement
for Local 147, the union for the famed “sandhogs” who dig the tunnels, includes
a pay rate for most members of $111 per hour in salary and benefits. Weekend
overtime pays quadruple — more than $400 per hour.
Some of these
laborers (those who operate the drills), require some skills, but many others
like the elevator button pushers are purely unskilled laborers who don't even
need a high school diploma.
One part of
Local 147’s deal entitles the union to $450,000 for each tunnel-boring machine
used. That is to make up for job losses from “technological advancement,” even
though equipment has been standard for decades.
But maybe the
idea of working on subway tunnels, even at $400 an hour, doesn't appeal to you.
If you're willing to consider a small
pay cut, consider working for the New York transit authority, where the
average compensation is $140,000 a year.
New York City
Transit paid
$6.2 billion in wages and benefits for the 44,256 workers and bosses who
operate the subways and buses. That works out to average compensation of
$140,000, essentially the same as workers in city agencies, according to Jamison Dague, the director of
infrastructure studies at the Citizens Budget Commission.
You could even
work in a ticket booth for about $112,000 a year, even though 83% of all subway
fares are sold by machines and workers in ticket booth have nothing to do most
of the time and are prevented, by union rules, from helping out in any other
part of the station.
This is all made
possible by the cozy relationship between unions and Democratic politicians.
Several
contractors said the unions are able to maintain the deals because everybody
knows they are politically powerful. The unions working on M.T.A. projects have
donated more than $1 million combined to Mr. Cuomo during his administration,
records show. The vendors that worked on the East Side Access, Second Avenue
subway and No. 7 line projects have given a combined $5 million to New York
politicians since the projects began in 2000, a Times analysis found. A Times
analysis of the 25 M.T.A. agency presidents who have left over the past two
decades found that at least 18 of them became consultants or went to work for
authority contractors, including many who have worked on expansion projects.
You may ask, why
do liberals tolerate this? Why do they keep voting Democrat? Are they unaware
of what's going on?
Of course not.
Every few years
when articles like this are written, people express outrage for a few minutes,
and then they continue voting lockstep Democrat at the next election. Most
liberals think this kind of massive corruption is the unavoidable cost of
running government, and since Democrats are so virtuous on issues of race,
class, and sex, any excesses are to be excused. The corruption of the Cuomo
administration is excused in the same way as Bill Clinton dropping his pants in
the Oval Office: not ideal, but look at all that money he's giving to people on
welfare and Planned Parenthood!