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According to Philly.com, the city has experienced a 20% increase in hotel bookings directly related to improved work rules at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Record scratch - what?
Check out the numbers in the article. They're impressive.
It's also a mind blowing no-brainer the Pennsylvania Convention Center should have grasped way back when it opened in 1993. But politics and the mentality of residents have changed. The only thing that hasn't changed, it seems, are the tactics of the dying trade unions. And they're not dying because of public perception, they're suffocating themselves by refusing to acknowledge a new millennium...already 14 years old.
How effective are their weekly protests at the Convention Center? Those of us annoyed by their routined rhetoric are local, while the vast majority of convention attendees are not. Conventioneers are simply returning home with a funny story about some inflatable "Fat Cat" they saw in Philadelphia. Their presence has little to no barring on any conventions. Hell, they're even offering up some good music at 12th and Arch.
Lately they've been picketing Boxers, a new bar in the Gayborhood...at 10am. You know when customers and employees aren't at bars? At 10am. One passerby even commented on the inflatable rat, "I don't get it, are they calling themselves rats?"
They're cluelessness would be sad if they weren't trying to strangle development in the city. Protests at Goldtex Apartments at 12th and Pearl were so misguided that the developers, the Post Brothers, actually highjacked their rhetoric and used it as a marketing ploy. But those acting out were too bent on chasing their waking dream that they didn't get it.
Here's how lost they are: When I was taking pictures of some picketers at an apartment development near Race and Camac one day, a protestor mistook me for someone who gave a shit and said. "Look, dey got den damn Mexicans working up there, you know dey ain't local."
I didn't even know how to respond. Not because of the racist nature of his remark, but because the racist nature of his remark was about two layers deep. The workers he was pointing at were Chinese...in Chinatown. So I just muttered something about all the New Jersey license plates illegally parked next to him and walked away.
These are organizations so deeply indebted to their own dysfunctions that they can't even recognize the fact that they need guidance. Philadelphia's sidewalks are a mouse maze of pedestrians staring at their phones and listening to Taylor Swift. The 21st Century cares about a union protest only for as long as it takes to post it on Instagram.
The best thing the more rigid unions could do would be to hire a public relationship manager well versed in marketing organ slimming pills during Real Housewives marathons. Someone who understands that the only causes the modern world cares about are those with a brand and sexy spokespeople.
But they're lost, buried beneath rhetoric that applied in an era when politicians turned a blind eye to the illegal and violent efforts that got unscrupulous results. But the truth is, politicians were never on their side. Politicians are on the side of what wins elections. And in a new world where picket lines are irrelevant, politicians who join, lose. And the delusions that keep fueling these aging unions' tactics have turned them into a nonsensical circus, and that's exactly why they'll vanish.
After a failure to agree on a new contract, the Pennsylvania Convention Center has barred union carpenters from the building. Just in time for the American Academy of Neurology's convention, union carpenters insisted on returning to work under the terms of their old contract.
The difference in contracts?
The new contract would increase pay, but allow vendors to use stepladders and electric screwdrivers, drug testing, and allow vendors a greater space to work without union labor.
Union carpenters are concerned that this will cut back on hours, and therefore pay. Probably true, but that's the point. The PCC's piss poor return rate is the direct result of its expense and frustration, and it's reputation as a to-be-avoided venue is growing. When literal brain surgeons are required to wait for a union carpenter to use an electric screwdriver, vendors begin asking what they're really paying for.
The terms of the PCC's new contract seek to address the issues the center likely understands, but it's historic reluctance to stand up to the union's rigid tactics is indicative of the state's political position. Let's face it, these are jobs for the sake of jobs. Like gas pumpers in New Jersey and Oregon, they're nothing more.
The unions know that, the press knows that, and most of all the state knows that the trade unions are the loudest of them all. Harrisburg and City Hall know that voters don't like hearing "job cuts," and until your average voter understands the difference between a trade union and a teachers union, the goons will continue to win each fight at the PCC.
After decades of terrorizing any developer, private or pubic, who dare screw in a light bulb without consulting a union, the city has remained silent. Despite public opinion, the region's trade unions reign is formidable and elected officials have routinely allowed them to operate within their own unofficial City Hall.
The Feds have another opinion. After ironworkers allegedly torched a Quaker construction site last year - you read that right, Quaker - the FBI has arrested ten members of Local 401 including its leader Joseph Dougherty.
The media is having a field day with the group which apparently referred to itself as "the helpful union guys," or T.H.U.G.S. But don't let journalistic romance, and its readers' short attention spans fool you. This is huge. The arrests coincide with the completion of Post Brothers' Goldtex Apartments, which succeeded despite an absence of union labor and leaders unwilling to compromise.
Federal attention on Philadelphia's notoriously difficult unions could be promising to a slew of proposed projects which otherwise intended to deal with the demons of doing business here. While developers in New York and Chicago are often backed with the funds to face unions, Philadelphia and Rust Belt towns are left with sensible proposals at the mercy of union extortion.
If the Mafioso tactics often employed by unions, allegedly or otherwise, are reigned in by the Feds, cities like Philadelphia could enjoy the growth Southern and West Coast cities continue to see despite a lack of pharmaceuticals, universities, and Comcast. Just imagine a Philadelphia skyline that plays by the same rules as Atlanta.
As trade union members still protest at the site of Post Brothers' Goldtex Apartments, things are getting a bit, well, sad.
They've clearly switched from targeting the construction crew and general public to targeting potential renters. Their latest stunt has included a couple mannequins in white decontamination suits with signs suggesting that the site is infested with mold.
Of course without proof this might be considered slanderous, but why bother? The fact that the unions are trying to deter renters means they've ceded to the notion that the building will be rented.
At this point, what is their end game? What resolve will satisfy the few who continue to protest?
The media has dragged the Post Brothers' names through the mud, L&I has repeatedly halted development for investigations, City Council and the Mayor's Office have proven where their allegiance lies, and the project is still active.
If any misconduct is taking place at Goldtex it would have been revealed by a media or government at the unions' beck and call for the past year. Yet the Post Brothers are still succeeding.
What would make the cheerleaders happy? Do they want jobs at Goldtex? Do they want the project abandoned? Do they want to bankrupt Post Brothers? Do they think they can?
At the beginning their message was clear: Post Brothers didn't hire a union crew.
But what's left?
The unions lost this battle, but there are countless other projects throughout the city worthy of their inflatable rat.
They continue to peddle a lost message at Goldtex, one that has proven to be ineffectual, and a protest that no longer does the unions any favor. Without focus they look like grown toddlers throwing a temper tantrum, hurting whatever credibility they had left by focusing their attention on one lost cause.
What's even worse for the unions than their reluctance to cede this battle is that they've learned nothing from the loss. Their strategy is unchanged. They launched a 21st Century turf war with fifty year old rhetoric.
When inflatable rats and poorly worded banners don't work, you don't drag your rat and worn commentary to the next protest. You regroup and strategize.
As our city grows more and more tired from union fatigue, they've become the white noise of a dying movement.
Where's their PR manager?
Their message appeals to a working class mid-century America, not to the diverse crew of Post Brothers' workforce and certainly not to anyone with the means to rent a $1400 apartment.
In order to advertise their cause they need to sell it to yuppies shopping for a cushy loft or understand why "scabs" exist. People who buy $90 bottles of olive oil take one look at your typical union picket line and think, "geez, if they don't want me to live here it must be swank."
Post Brothers are receiving heat again with claims from the city's unions, aided by a hackneyed investigation on the part of ABC's Wendy Saltzman.
I have to give it to Saltzman for doing her job. After all, the mainstream media is in the business of running stories that accumulate comments that translate into advertisement, not peddling that annoying little thing called journalism. Nothing gets people talking in Philadelphia like unions, and any reporter in Philadelphia worth her words has a Google alert set for "Goldtex Apartments."
The tactics to derail Post Brother's Goldtex project have become increasingly tedious and technical as the building nears completion, however this time the claims are not completely erroneous.
Although the blueprints were approved years ago by L&I, the city's firefighter's union president, Joe Schulle has filed a legitimate concern.
Unions stick together, but the recent complaint filed with L&I may not be part of our unions' mafia-like solidarity that tends to bring construction to a halt.
So what's the problem? Well, that's not entirely clear.
The plans approved by L&I show the building's studio units with lofts above the bathroom and closet. Access to the loft is by way of a pull down staircase that blocks the unit's only entrance. Plain and simple, it's a fire hazard. When L&I approved the plans the loft space was strictly designated as storage or utility space.
Unfortunately, Goldtex Apartment's sales reps are selling the space as extra living space. Let's be realistic here, that's what they were going for all along and how any tenant would use the space. L&I might not be in the business of marketing apartment units, but they should have a rigid set of guidelines that dictates that any space, utility or otherwise needs to be easily escapable.
It was shortsighted of L&I to approve this configuration, but also shortsighted on the part of the architects. Access to the loft could be easily configured to the right or left of the apartment's entrance. L&I should have pointed that out when they reviewed the plans, and the Post Brothers and their architects should have complied.
At Post Brother's eleventh hour it poses a last minute headache that would be minimal to any other developer. But for developers embroiled in an ongoing battle with the city's trade unions, and now the firefighter's union, the media has turned an easily addressable issue into breaking news and stalled construction.
The stairs will either stay or get moved, but our trade unions' dream of a vacant Goldtex Apartment Building and a bankrupt Post Brothers won't happen. The positioning of the stairs is certainly a valid concern, one which should have been addressed before construction began.
But the outcry from the trade unions and their supporters, and the media's overreaction on their behalf is only making them appear less credible and relevant to a much larger and rational public that already views these unions as petty and outdated.
It's a shame because in this particular instance the firefighter's union is actually doing what it was designed to do, but the trade unions have done such a good job at crying wolf that when any union actually does its job, only the union members and muckrakers seem to care.
