The crane accident on the far West Side that took the life of a construction worker last week has ratcheted up a ferocious fight over who will get to control the hiring of crane operators for decades to come.
On one side is the Department of Buildings, which has proposed regulations that would allow anyone who qualifies for a specific crane license in selected large cities to work in New York after meeting experience requirements and undergoing 40 hours of classroom training.
On the other side is Local 14 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which wants the city to continue administering the crane-operator test and not recognize outside licenses.
At stake: the highly lucrative crane-operator jobs that will sprout when two of the city’s planned mega-projects, Hudson Yards and Cornell’s tech campus on Roosevelt Island, get into high gear.
“For all intents and purposes, the union controls who gets a license right now,” said one insider.
That vanishes the day a crane specialist from, say, Chicago, sets foot into the cab of a 200-foot hoist here.
In a blistering statement, Local 14 president Eddie Christian charged that Mayor Bloomberg was acting in cahoots with “his super-rich developer friends” to try to break his union.
“It’s evident that the real issue here is the drive to reduce labor costs, even if it reduces New Yorkers’ safety,” Christian claimed.
There’s no love lost between developers and Local 14, which is operating under the watch of a federal monitor and has refused to join other construction unions that have entered into agreements to lower costs on some projects during the economic downturn.
But there’s no indication that the biggest developers are suddenly going to cast aside union labor.
Union lobbyists have enlisted aid from the City Council, where at least 35 members back a bill that would require that all crane operators be tested here.
The exam would be basically the same one the federal government is going to mandate nationally by 2014.
“If the buildings commissioner has to re-write the test, why would he start from scratch?” asked one city official.
The New York test that the union is clamoring for could wind up looking very much like the national exam it wants to banish.
For all the heated rhetoric, there might be some common ground that could lead to a compromise.
Both sides, for example, are prepared to support the retesting of crane operators every five years. No re-qualification is required today.