March 29, 2011--Beer Boy
Back in the day, I was a sheet metal worker. Tin knockers, as we were called, installed heating and air-conditioning systems. In today’s parlance, HVAC systems.
The sheet metal part consisted of the ducts that were fabricated from sheet metal and connected the cooling and heating components of the system to the registers, or vents in the rooms to which the warmed or cooled air was distributed. We threaded these through risers that moved the air from floor to floor and then, hanging them from the ceilings, ran rectangular sheet metal ducts from room to room. Ducts made of tin. Actually, of galvanized steel.
It’s a bit more technical than this (we also, for example, had to install return systems that drew spent air back to the chillers and heaters) but you have the picture.
Back in the day we were all unionized--my union in New York City was Local 28—and thus we were very well paid. In today’s dollars, we could take home up to a couple of thousand per week in regular pay and overtime.
Journeymen sheet metal workers in New York these days get $46 an hour, time and a half for overtime, and double time after about seven hours of regular overtime during the course of a week, or if they are asked to work on Sundays. Benefits, which are generous, bring the actual compensation to about $85 dollars an hour.
Pretty good wages, but not enough to make anyone rich, especially considering what it costs to live in the New York area.
But in these hard times, and actually for quite a while, to rein in construction costs, and of course maximize profits for real estate developers and contractors, more and more jobs in the city and around the country have been going to non-union workers.
In my day, if a contractor tried to sneak a non-union guy onto a work crew—and some did—on the spot, we’d all walk off the job, shutting it down, and would not return until that semi-scab was let go.
In these antiunion days, this is no longer happening. Unless construction worker unions are willing to make compromises, agree to give-backs a là teachers around the country, contractors, with public labor enforcement officials looking the other way, will turn the work over to workers willing to accept at least 25 percent less; and on smaller job, considerably less than that.
Employers are also forcing unions to accept dramatic changes in work rules. On union jobs, then and now, the seven-hour workday begins when men (and now women) are ready to begin to work. This means, on a building of more than a floor or two, when they congregate at the few elevators that have been certified by city inspectors as ready to carry passengers.
This might include only one or two in a building where the eventual bank of elevators will number a dozen or more. As a result, there is considerable congestion at 8:30, the official start of the workday. It is not unusual for a half hour to lapse before all the men and women can get up to the floors on which they are scheduled to work.
And the same thing happens at the end of the day. So, up to an $85-hour is “wasted” paying for workers to get to and from their actual worksites. Contractors have zeroed in on this practice; and, among others, it is slowly changing. (See linked New York Times article for other examples.)
When I was a tin knocker, as the junior member of the work gang, one important aspect of my job was to run around the jobsite bringing ice-cold beer to the men. Especially to steamfitters who were in an affiliated union.
Their work had been made largely redundant by the advent of modern heating and cooling technology. Before that, but back in the steamfitters’ day, they had a lot to do on the job since heat came from boilers, which generated steam that then had to be brought to all parts of the building through steel pipes. Steamfitters installed those pipes and fit them together. Thus, their name.
But with heat supplied by hot air and air-conditioning supplied by chilled air via sheet metal ducts, there was, in truth, no work for them. But the union rules required one steamfitter to be on the job for every tin knocker. They were called standby workers. With nothing to do, they spent the day standing by, actually hanging around, earning wages even higher than ours, drinking beer, and snoozing in the subbasement where it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The Beer Boy, me, kept them supplied with beer all day long and then ran around waking them up at quitting time to make sure they didn't get locked in overnight.
As with so many of our complex social problems, there is blame to share; but even decades ago, as a 17-yer-old kid, I knew there was something very wrong with our work rules as well as the behavior of contractors and developers. We were all ripping off a lush system in which there appeared to be no limits. We’re paying now for a lot of things that we allowed to get out of hand. Put the construction business high on that list.
The sheet metal part consisted of the ducts that were fabricated from sheet metal and connected the cooling and heating components of the system to the registers, or vents in the rooms to which the warmed or cooled air was distributed. We threaded these through risers that moved the air from floor to floor and then, hanging them from the ceilings, ran rectangular sheet metal ducts from room to room. Ducts made of tin. Actually, of galvanized steel.
It’s a bit more technical than this (we also, for example, had to install return systems that drew spent air back to the chillers and heaters) but you have the picture.
Back in the day we were all unionized--my union in New York City was Local 28—and thus we were very well paid. In today’s dollars, we could take home up to a couple of thousand per week in regular pay and overtime.
Journeymen sheet metal workers in New York these days get $46 an hour, time and a half for overtime, and double time after about seven hours of regular overtime during the course of a week, or if they are asked to work on Sundays. Benefits, which are generous, bring the actual compensation to about $85 dollars an hour.
Pretty good wages, but not enough to make anyone rich, especially considering what it costs to live in the New York area.
But in these hard times, and actually for quite a while, to rein in construction costs, and of course maximize profits for real estate developers and contractors, more and more jobs in the city and around the country have been going to non-union workers.
In my day, if a contractor tried to sneak a non-union guy onto a work crew—and some did—on the spot, we’d all walk off the job, shutting it down, and would not return until that semi-scab was let go.
In these antiunion days, this is no longer happening. Unless construction worker unions are willing to make compromises, agree to give-backs a là teachers around the country, contractors, with public labor enforcement officials looking the other way, will turn the work over to workers willing to accept at least 25 percent less; and on smaller job, considerably less than that.
Employers are also forcing unions to accept dramatic changes in work rules. On union jobs, then and now, the seven-hour workday begins when men (and now women) are ready to begin to work. This means, on a building of more than a floor or two, when they congregate at the few elevators that have been certified by city inspectors as ready to carry passengers.
This might include only one or two in a building where the eventual bank of elevators will number a dozen or more. As a result, there is considerable congestion at 8:30, the official start of the workday. It is not unusual for a half hour to lapse before all the men and women can get up to the floors on which they are scheduled to work.
And the same thing happens at the end of the day. So, up to an $85-hour is “wasted” paying for workers to get to and from their actual worksites. Contractors have zeroed in on this practice; and, among others, it is slowly changing. (See linked New York Times article for other examples.)
When I was a tin knocker, as the junior member of the work gang, one important aspect of my job was to run around the jobsite bringing ice-cold beer to the men. Especially to steamfitters who were in an affiliated union.
Their work had been made largely redundant by the advent of modern heating and cooling technology. Before that, but back in the steamfitters’ day, they had a lot to do on the job since heat came from boilers, which generated steam that then had to be brought to all parts of the building through steel pipes. Steamfitters installed those pipes and fit them together. Thus, their name.
But with heat supplied by hot air and air-conditioning supplied by chilled air via sheet metal ducts, there was, in truth, no work for them. But the union rules required one steamfitter to be on the job for every tin knocker. They were called standby workers. With nothing to do, they spent the day standing by, actually hanging around, earning wages even higher than ours, drinking beer, and snoozing in the subbasement where it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The Beer Boy, me, kept them supplied with beer all day long and then ran around waking them up at quitting time to make sure they didn't get locked in overnight.
As with so many of our complex social problems, there is blame to share; but even decades ago, as a 17-yer-old kid, I knew there was something very wrong with our work rules as well as the behavior of contractors and developers. We were all ripping off a lush system in which there appeared to be no limits. We’re paying now for a lot of things that we allowed to get out of hand. Put the construction business high on that list.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:31 AM
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