OK, now I understand why nothing ever gets done in government. A while back, i organized a bunch of concerned fathers, to help fix the citie’s delapidated swimming pool -hasn’t been open for 4 years-due to “budget cuts”. So, like the idiotic “good citizen” I am, I got together 20-odd guys to spend a couple saturdays fixing it up: Home Depot would donate paint and supplies, meanwhilc, we have a plumber (who will fix the broken pipes in the bathhouse), and electrician (who will replace the ancient lighting fixtures, and replace the vandalized switches). Meanwhile , the rest of us could sanblast and paint the pool, clean and paint the bathhouse. No more than $5000 of supplies and parts, and 2-3 Saturday’s work,
Now the fun starts:
'-City attorney: you can’t work there, we have no insurance to cover anyone injured!-Well, duhh-have you ever heard of “umbrella” insurance-maybe , like $500 for 3 days?
-City “workers” union:-You can’t do that, you are stealing wages from our members/brothers! Well, the reason this sh*thole is falling apart is because your “brothers” didn’t do their jobs!
-Now the IBEW" "You HAVE to hire a UNION electrician!
So, I give up! let the dump fall apart!
I never knew that (trying) to do some good would land me in so much HOT WATER!!
No.
You need a union chef to boil the hot water you’re in.
Won’t happen.
Try the media. Maybe the Unions will feel pressure to donate their time to a good cause.
ralph, I know of 2 city pools, and both are in great shape.
Where is the one you are talking about?
Note to self:
Go to the union and ask them to “donate” their time and materials FIRST before getting scabs to donate their time and materials. :rolleyes:
Changed thread title to be less useless.
I hope you were kidding when you wrote this. When’s the last time public opinion mattered one whit to unions?
Go ahead and work on the pool. WTF are they (unions) going to do? Pressure the DA into prosecuting you? The unions are impervious to ire, the prosecutor would need to answer for it during the next election cycle. (Or whomever appointed the DA, depending on jurisdiction.)
I wouldn’t blame the unions in this case - you are, in fact, taking potential work away from their workers, which may be prohibited by their contract with the city.
Did you check with the local government about procedures before you lined everybody else up? There’s a reason every Eagle Scout project I was ever involved in back in my pre-pre-marital sex years involved a significant paperwork-and-project-planning phase; it was to make sure that the people we were looking to help out actually wanted and needed our assistance.
The pool is public property, meaning it’s owned by everybody in your town, not just you, twenty other dudes, and Home Depot. Once you’ve fixed it, the City will presumably have to pay for operations - lifeguards, maintenance, etc - and insurance - on the off chance that some kid splits their head open or drowns. Thanks to your goodwill, they gross five grand and a couple hundred free man hours of labor, but they’re down probably tens of thousands in ongoing expenses.
If you really want the pool fixed, petition council to raise your taxes to pay for it. That’s the way government works, unless you live in a commune.
I think most good people are communists at heart. Not so sure about unions though. 'course I’m biased–I think 99% of labor unions are unneccessary “me-too!” outfits which amount to little less than Western Yakuza holding hostage the people they supposedly represent. I’m all about protecting folks from losing their income because they refuse to work in unsafe conditions. But come on, Plumbers? Teachers? Grocery clerks?
And to single out teachers, what kind of useless union have they got! They strike and then cave in when they get offered starvation wages? They’ve got America by the balls and they don’t squeeze? WTF! Their union dues would be better spent on food.
I bet if you asked the union you might get volunteers.
I know around here some of the trade union apprentice programs send people to do that sort of thing. In this area they did a lot of restroration work that was volunteer. As an apprentice I think they have to complete a certain amount of hours and the time they spent went working on the city restoration project counted toward their schooling.
It’s worth a try to contact them.
Slave wages? Where do you live? The average teachers salary here is $53,663.00
No. it’s. not. Nor should it be. The OP’s solution, 20 local citizens, and Big Business, working together to solve a local problem is inherently better than “raising taxes” as a “solution”.
I see no mention in the OP of providing for ongoing costs after the pool is fixed.
ETA: Nor do I see a response to tdn’s question.
Other concerned citizens, who are inclined to do so, can raise funds for ongoing operations. I don’t see a reason for coercive taxes to force the entire town to pay for a pool, whether they want one or not.
So which contractor gets sued when someone messes up and the result costs the city more money than it would have to utilize the existing labor arrangements. Lots of people are happy to volunteer their time, but volunteering accountability is a whole different ball game. The existing city contracts for this sort of thing already cover that.
Normally I am not a big fan of unions, but my dad is a general contractor. Who is left holding the bag when something goes wrong in this type of situation can get very messy.
Our local fire department ran afoul of this type of problem a few years back when a crew decided to paint part their own station. This ran afoul of a contract with a local painting company who had a contract to paint fire stations. The painting contractor sued and won, the city had to pay the contractor for a job that was done even though he didn’t have to do it.
As it is a publicly-owned pool, presumably the town elected officials decided that they did want that pool. years ago when they invested the townspeoples’ taxes to build it.
Yes, the OP is intended as a slam against Unions. Not as a complaint about the poor little kiddies who will be denied a pool this summer.
How smart of you to realize that. (Or maybe you weren’t suppposed to be so overt.)
If you and your like-minded neighbors want a public pool, why not pay for it yourselves, instead of coercing the entire townspeople into paying for it?
that’s the beauty of a representative democracy, a small percentage of the electoriate is unable to force the majority to bow to their whims.
This is exactly backwards. In my town, the current issue is a $25M library expansion. It’s been voted down, every time. But now, the library supporters are openly touting the fact that in the upcoming local election (no state or federal offices in play) they have a better chance to “win”, due to lower voter turnout. If voter turnout in a strictly local election is around 35%, then it would only take 18% “yes” votes to pass the expansion.
How is that representative democracy, when only 18% of the voters approve?
representative democracy assumes that if you care about the issue, you’ll vote. Deal.