No Red Tape? Non-Union FEMA Crews, Water and Other Supplies Sit Idle Thanks To Unions & Red Tape

Via TSP

It’s been two weeks since Hurricane Sandy killed 113 people, wiped out portions of towns, and knocked out power to millions. It has also been two weeks since Barack Obama pledged, “No bureaucracy. No red tape.”

However, according to multiple public and private sources, unions and union-related red tape are causing workers from out of state to be turned back, as well as workers contracted by FEMA, as well as tons of supplies, already in New York and New Jersey to sit idle—at a cost of millions to taxpayers.


It has already been well publicized though the Daily Caller how the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers demanded unionization of out-of-state utility workers in order for them to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Long Island’s Newsday reported over the weekend that the union’s demands cost New York 125 extra workers to help with restoring electricity to those in the dark.

Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, said Long Island could have received 125 additional workers from utilities across Florida as soon as two days after the storm if a dispute about the letters had been resolved sooner. He said most of the crews from Florida who were available were nonunion and refused to join Local 1049 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, even if only temporarily.[snip]

Crews that could have come to Long Island went instead to Pennsylvania, Moline said. “We could have been there on Wednesday, and instead we arrived on Sunday,” he said, after the union rescinded the requirement. [Emphasis added.]

It gets worse.

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