NYC Mayor de Blasio Supporting Union Busting And Privatization In NYC

NYC Mayor de Blasio Supporting Union Busting And Privatization In NYC
NYC Demo Mayor Bill de Blasio Picks Scab Union Busting Operation Hornblower Run By Terry MacRae To Run New NYC Ferry System
"Mr. Short was surrounded by his clients: officials from New York City’s Economic Development Corporation and the company chosen to run the ferry system, Hornblower. Terry MacRae, the chief executive of Hornblower, had traveled from San Francisco — where his company’s ferries carry tourists to Alcatraz — to check on the boats, each of which will cost nearly $4 million.
Mr. MacRae said he was confident that unless there was an unpredictable calamity, enough boats would be finished in time for the ferry service to start on schedule. The development corporation expects Hornblower to run three routes — between Manhattan and docks in South Brooklyn, and Astoria and Rockaway in Queens — beginning in the summer, followed by three others the next year. Hornblower will need 13 boats for the initial routes.
“We had no reason to doubt that this could be done,” Mr. MacRae said."
http://www.nytimes.com/…/bayou-shipyards-race-political-clo…
Builders are on a tight schedule to reach the summer deadline
Mayor Bill de Blasio set for the start of his $325-million
citywide ferry service, timed to begin as he seeks re-election.
By PATRICK McGEEHANNOV. 21, 2016
BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. — In a busy boatyard in this Gulf Coast capital of shrimping, more than 100 laborers have been putting in long hours shaping and welding a set of shiny, silver hulls — not for fishing trawlers, but for New York City’s new fleet of commuter ferries.
The workers are racing the political calendar, under pressure from city officials to have the boats ready to carry passengers a few months before Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, stands for re-election next November. The ambitious citywide ferry service that Mr. de Blasio has pledged to begin next summer, with 19 ferries and a cost of more than $325 million, would be the most extensive of its kind in any American city.
His ability to deliver on that promise rests on the shoulders of the boat builders here and in another shipyard about 225 miles west, in the bayous of southern Louisiana. Though the builders are more accustomed to constructing rugged vessels like tugboats, they have taken a fancy to making boats that will have a higher profile.
Two companies in distant Gulf Coast towns were contracted to construct New York’s ferries, in the hopes that a hurricane would not affect both. At left, a worker with Metal Shark in Franklin, La.; right, a welder’s equipment at Horizon Shipbuilders, in Bayou Le Batre, Ala. CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
“We know it’s a big deal,” said Fritz Deegen, 30, a machinist foreman at Horizon Shipbuilding here, where construction on seven of the ferries is in progress. Mr. Deegen, a Mississippi native, said he had never visited New York City but eventually would like to see the ferries in action. “I’d like to go some day and check out y’all’s very fast-paced lifestyle,” he said.
Mr. Deegen and his co-workers may be detached from the political demands emanating from New York’s City Hall, but he said they were motivated by the tight deadline Mr. de Blasio had set for them. “I like the challenge of building these boats in 11 months,” he said.
So does his boss, Travis Short, the president of Horizon. Mr. Short said he had hired more than 80 workers this summer to supplement his work force. As many as 30 of them had worked for Horizon in the past, a sign of how fluid the shipbuilding industry can be and how it has slumped along with the oil-exploration business.
Tugboats under construction at Horizon Shipbuilding, where some of the workers are enjoying the high-profile of the project. “We know it’s a big deal,” said Fritz Deegen, 30, a machinist foreman.CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
Photo
Metal Shark, in Franklin, La., has a team of 45 workers building four more ferries to match those produced by Horizon. CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
“We are not in a boom era at the moment, so people were available,” Mr. Short said the other day, after his crews devoured a catered meal of boiled shrimp, sausage and corn.
Mr. Short was surrounded by his clients: officials from New York City’s Economic Development Corporation and the company chosen to run the ferry system, Hornblower. Terry MacRae, the chief executive of Hornblower, had traveled from San Francisco — where his company’s ferries carry tourists to Alcatraz — to check on the boats, each of which will cost nearly $4 million.
Mr. MacRae said he was confident that unless there was an unpredictable calamity, enough boats would be finished in time for the ferry service to start on schedule. The development corporation expects Hornblower to run three routes — between Manhattan and docks in South Brooklyn, and Astoria and Rockaway in Queens — beginning in the summer, followed by three others the next year. Hornblower will need 13 boats for the initial routes.
“We had no reason to doubt that this could be done,” Mr. MacRae said.
Inside the shipyards, the pace of work is full tilt. At Horizon, five ferries are in various stages of completion, propped up on wooden blocks beneath a 50-foot-tall shed that was expanded for the project. The latest arrival on the production line is an aluminum hull awaiting its main deck. The first ferry, known as Hornblower One, is fully formed, with the frame of its pilot house centered on the upper deck.
Workers crawled all over it on a recent weekday, measuring, wiring and welding. Mr. Short said Hornblower One was 44 percent complete, and he expected it to be ready for the water in February.
Terry MacRae, the chief executive of Hornblower, the company chosen to run the ferry system, on one of the ferries under construction at Horizon. CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
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The assembly dock at Horizon last week. The first ferry, Hornblower One, is expected to be ready for the water by February. CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
Standing beneath that boat’s hull, Mr. MacRae joked about New York’s increasingly crowded waterways, saying, “This is the view we don’t want any kayakers to have.”
In a three-sided shed in Franklin, La., about 100 miles west of New Orleans, another boatbuilder, Metal Shark, has a team of 45 workers building four more ferries to match those produced by Horizon. To the untrained eye, all of the boats under construction look identical — except for three that will have deeper, wider hulls to smooth out the choppy waters between the Rockaways and the Wall Street dock in Manhattan.
When the ferries are finished, commuters will not be able to distinguish between the two companies’ products, said Josh Stickles, the marketing director for Metal Shark. “But we will,” he added, gesturing toward welders attaching aluminum plates to the inverted frame of a hull.
Some skeptics have criticized the city’s plan to make all of the boats 85 feet long with a capacity of 149 passengers, as opposed to having some larger vessels for the hourlong run to and from Rockaway. “Confusingly, they’re building 20 boats the same size,” Tom Fox, who once ran New York Water Taxi, said at a ferry conference in Manila last month.
Mr. Fox also questioned the city’s decision to charge riders the same fare that subway riders pay, which is $2.75 now but may rise next year. That is significantly less than the $4 it costs to ride the East River Ferry service that the city has been subsidizing for several years. The success of that service prompted the decision to expand it citywide and to eventually bring it to the Bronx and Staten Island.
But for now, city officials are concentrating on proving to skeptics that more than a dozen passenger ferries could be built in a year. Seth Myers, an executive vice president with the city’s development corporation, said he was impressed with the collaboration between the shipyards. “We’ve seen just a very energetic approach to delivering these boats on schedule,” Mr. Myers said.
Metal Shark has specialized in building sets of boats for government agencies, both domestic and foreign, Mr. Stickles said. When the company received the ferry contract from Hornblower, its workers were wrapping up a set of 18 sleek patrol boats for the Vietnam Coast Guard.
A worker at Horizon Shipbuilders, where five ferries are currently in various stages of completion.CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
Photo
Horizon workers assembling ferry hulls. CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times
With orders down from the oil and gas industry, which supported many of the shipyards in the region, Mr. Stickles said that Metal Shark wanted to diversify its business. He called the ferry work “one of the coolest projects we’ve been able to do” because it would allow the company “to showcase our capabilities on such a big stage.”
Metal Shark’s process differs in some fundamental ways from Horizon’s, but Mr. Stickles laid out a similar schedule. He said his company would finish its first ferry in the first quarter of 2017 and another every two weeks afterward.
The arrangement is highly unusual. Independent shipyards do not normally collaborate on a set of boats, but Mr. MacRae and city officials insisted on spreading their risk. They chose the two shipyards because they had handled large orders and were far enough apart to make it unlikely that a single hurricane would damage both of them.
The shipyards appear to have escaped the 2016 hurricane season unscathed, but tropical storms are always part of the equation here.
Bayou La Batre, a scruffy village with about 2,500 residents, was inundated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At the time, Christopher Dishon was a 13-year-old student in the local public school. Now, at 24 with a bushy beard, he operates a machine that precisely bends strips of thick aluminum to meet the specifications of the Australian company that designed the ferries — a job he said he was very grateful to have.
“It’s a lot of math, so I’m glad I paid attention in my training classes,” Mr. Dishon said before returning to the task at hand.
Correction: November 21, 2016
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described a criticism of the city’s plan for the new ferries. Some have criticized the plan to make all boats the same size, instead of having larger vessels for the trip to Rockaway. The criticism was not that there should be smaller vessels for less popular routes.

Bayou Shipyards Race Political Clock to Build New York’s Ferries
Builders are on a tight schedule to reach the summer deadline Mayor Bill de Blasio set for the start of his $325-million citywide ferry service, timed to begin as he…
NYTIMES.COM|BY PATRICK MCGEEHAN