OPINION:
Move over, Starbucks. In union America, serving coffee is a six-figure career.
According to a recent lawsuit, New York City’s Concrete Workers District Council forced Hudson Yards Construction — Manhattan’s largest development company — to pay union workers more than $42 an hour to deliver coffee at its Hudson Yards megaproject.
So-called “coffee boys” not only collected $23.79 worth in additional benefits, but they also charged their colleagues for food and beverages. In the lawsuit’s words: “Although categorized as employees, they are actually vendors.”
It gets worse. One of the coffee deliverers also happens to be “the 55-year-old brother of a high-ranking union official.” And his time seems to be quite valuable: In February 2015, “Coffee Boy #1” was compensated for 115 hours of work, of which 45 hours were classified as overtime payable at $69.87 per hour including benefits — nearly $150,000 a year.
The “coffee boy” scandal is a dumpster fire, but only the latest example of union waste that has littered the streets of New York for decades.
While developers are hassled above-ground, trade unions wreak just as much havoc below it. Last December, a New York Times investigation exposed the “excessive staffing, little competition, and generous contracts” that have come to plague the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) managing New York’s subway system. The MTA routinely negotiates with the Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC), which oversees the Concrete Workers and other local unions assigned to construction projects.
Unfortunately, union work doesn’t come cheap — whether it’s delivering coffee or building subway tunnels. In fact, BCTC contracts make New York’s subway the most expensive in the developed world.
The estimated cost of the “East Side Access” Long Island Rail Road project is $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the global average. By comparison, the second phase of Washington, D.C.’s Silver Line cost $240 million per mile of track. Atlanta’s I-20 East Heavy Rail averaged $170 million per track mile. Transit construction projects in France are even cheaper.
Why is New York so expensive? Between overstaffing and hefty wages, union contracts cost taxpayers millions of wasted dollars. The MTA budget for a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road included 900 workers being paid to dig caverns, even though an accounting review found only 700 jobs that needed to be filled. Union officials also recommend tunnel diggers who, for overtime and Sunday work, earn more than $400 an hour. Unemployed workers are often paid $1,000 a day.
Even many “legitimate” union jobs have no discernible value, including break room supervisors and workers paid to lubricate cranes that are self-lubricating. Elevators are also given their own operators, even though they are automatic.
And union officials don’t stop there. Trade unions are paid $450,000 for each tunnel-boring machine used for subway construction to pay for job losses from “technological advancement.” Yet tunnel-boring equipment has been standard for decades.
So who’s to blame for the union waste? Much of it falls on the shoulders of BCTC President Gary LaBarbera, who continues strong-arming the MTA with costly contracts.
When The Times pressed Mr. LaBarbera on subway construction costs, he responded: “We live in New York. It’s very expensive to live here. We take great pride in the work that we do. And the work rules are there to make sure we stay alive.”
Mr. LaBarbera even argued for higher payouts: “Construction workers deserve every penny they make, and more.”
In the end, he leaves subway riders footing the bill. When millions of dollars are spent to cover the BCTC’s expensive work rules and the cost overruns that follow, the subway is left with fewer resources for repairs and upgrades. The MTA already faces a $1 billion budget deficit, which is only compounded by $1,000-a-day unemployment payouts and $450,000 tunnel-boring machines.
New Yorkers are riding into another summer of dirty, delayed, and dangerous commutes.
• Richard Berman is the president of Berman and Company, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.