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Illegal strike could effectively shut city down

NEW YORK, NY (MGB) - Residents of New York City are on edge today as the union representing doormen, superintendents and other workers, but mostly doormen, in 3500 apartment buildings is planning a march and rally today to announce its contract demands.

As with most NYC unions of late, it is expected that the union’s demands will be considered unreasonable, not be met and lead to an all out strike that will leave thousands of New Yorkers trapped in their buildings with little hope of escape.

Although such a strike would be illegal under the Rockefeller/Doorman Good Faith Act of 1895, it is unclear what if any penalties the union would be forced to endure should they choose to strike.

Local 32BJ and the owners of the buildings are negotiating a new contract but as of last night the possibility of a compromise seemed remote at best. At the heart of the dispute is the union’s demand that doormen no longer be required to open doors.

According to union officials more of their members are injured every year in door opening mishaps than from any other cause, extreme Taxi hailing coming in a distant second.

The 28,000-member union said it is willing to negotiate, but not with the lives and health of its members, a stance that has left the union with precious little else to bargain with. Should their demands not be met, the union is planning to go on strike as early as Friday.

The organization that represents the building owners said the union’s demands are simply unreasonable especially when taking into account that the cost of benefits has skyrocketed. Many owners are threatening to simply replace their doormen with doors equipped with sensors that will open automatically.

Until recently the idea of doors that open on their own was considered a pipe dream or the stuff of bad science fiction, but recent advances in door opening technology are helping to make the dream a reality. The question remains however whether these “robotic doors” will be cost effective enough to justify their installation at the different buildings across the city.

The threat of robotic doors is one the doorman union takes very seriously but has done little to sway union members to compromise at the negotiations.

Pedro Guantana, who has worked as a doorman for over 25 years on the Upper East Side after leaving his ancestral home in Ireland said “There’s a very old saying in doorman circles that goes, when God closes a door, he opens a window, and while he’s busy doing that, we open the door back up. Such is the way of the doorman.

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