While the San Jose Redevelopment Agency struggles to scrounge together enough money to expand and refurbish San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center, Team San Jose CEO Dan Fenton is on his way to Dallas to try and protect the convention center’s existing business.
At the heart of the problem is a contract that the convention center signed with San Jose Teamsters Local 287, granting them exclusive rights to set up trade shows at the Center. The contract is contested by Teamsters Local 85 of San Francisco, which argues that businesses should have the option of choosing who gets to set up their trade shows.
San Jose Economic Development Director Paul Krutko opposes the exclusivity clause in the contract: “We want as much business as possible to come to the center. We don’t want people at national conventions to spend time talking about labor issues in San Jose,” he says. With the convention center already losing business because of the recession, he—and many other city officials—fear that the contentious contract could cause the center to lose even more business, further endangering its expansion plans.
Fenton says that he hopes to restructure, not rescind, the contract with Local 287. He is expected to report back to City Council at its January 12 meeting.
Read More at the Business Journal.
Dan Fenton seems like a nice-enough guy—but Team San Jose does not appear to have the best interests of the city at heart. Frankly it doesn’t seem to be doing much to help anyone but the South Bay Labor Council, which is only one of the groups it’s supposed to represent.
In this quote from today’s BizJournal article linked in this post, TSJ seems to be playing the worst kind of kneecapping politics, and Fenton comes off as completely disingenuous:
“Lynne Curtin, president of Curtin Convention & Exposition Services Inc. in San Francisco, was familiar with the conflict but was hesitant to comment because she feared a lawsuit.
‘We received a letter from an attorney representing Team San Jose that has advised me should we comment on the situation, there could be a legal matter,’ Curtin said. Reading from the letter dated Aug. 26, she said, ‘If we continue our efforts to intervene with the operation of Team San Jose and harm its business, Team San Jose will take prompt and vigorous action to protect its business.’
Fenton said the letter was an attempt to ensure ‘we’re all speaking factually and working together.’”
Is this really the organization we want running some of San Jose’s most valuable cultural assets?
Just in case anyone is unclear about what “exclusive rights” is about, public convention center unionized electricians typically demand $100 or $200 for plugging a standard electric cord into a 110 volt outlet.
This is not a case of extension cords where people might trip on them. The nearest outlet is always behind the booth, and no one puts their power supply where some idiot might accidentally yank it and pull the computer off the table. I’ve never seen a dangerous extension cord at a non-union convention.
It’s just one more way the city takes your tax money and gives it to the unions. Build a very expensive building, and then give the unions exclusive rights to it. Special charge for carpet, special charge for electricity, special charge to carry a box 20 feet. It adds up.
But, when the convention center demands an extra few hundred bucks from every exhibitor, I’m not surprised that some conventions avoid the union halls. That extra cost can help some exhibitors decide that it’s not worth coming back. When too many people avoid your convention, you’re out of business.
Unions are a major problem with the City of San Jose and its Redevelopment Agency. Contractors have to pay prevailing wages or at least “living” wages that inflate the cost to taxpayers. Meanwhile, the 90+% of the unionized city workforce enjoy compensation packages that often exceed 40% of those found in the private sector. Plus, union work rules discourage innovation. And, when layoffs occur in the city workforce, those employees with the least seniority are fired; not the least competent.
Actually, unions are a major problem for all levels of government: city, county, state and federal. Their friends in the legislature pass union friendly laws as well. Government worker pensions nationwide are hundreds of billions of dollars unfunded.
And soon, the Democrats will push for passing the “Freedom of Choice” bill in Congress. The bill eliminates secret ballot elections for employees who are asked whether they want their workplace to be unionized. Unions already are stopping free trade agreements with So. Korea and Columbia because they know they will lose jobs while U.S. consumers get imported products at reduced prices. Free trade will also provide markets in these countries for U.S. exporters to penetrate.
Let’s not forget the major role unions played in destroying the auto industry in Michigan, or the steel industry in the Midwest or the major role the public unions played in bankrupting Vallejo.
” Contractors have to pay prevailing wages, or at least living wages that inflate the cost to taxpayers”, my question to you, Jerry M., is very basic. What the hell is wrong with paying a “living wage”. How is a man supposed to feed his family, pay the rent, P.G.& E., taxes and on and on and on for anything less than a living wage? We all know that it cost more to live here than in 90% of the rest of the country. If you don`t pay a living wage, how long will it be before we see people living under overpasses, pushing shopping carts with all their earthly possesions neatly folded under dirty pieces of cardboard or rags. I`ll tell you how long, how about for the last 20 years at least. Jerry, walk a mile in their shoes, then talk to me about ” living wages ”
> If you don`t pay a living wage, how long will it be before we see people living under overpasses, pushing shopping carts with all their earthly possesions neatly folded under dirty pieces of cardboard or rags.
Dear Compassionate Dave G:
For what amount of work should a person be paid a “living wage”?
For squeege-ing the windshield of your car at a stop light?
For sitting behind a desk at city hall and telling people to sign in and stand in line?
For handing out “walking around money” to welfare recipients for “community building” (i.e. carrying signs at demonstrations and registering Democrat voters?)
Dear cold hearted Strident;
For what amount of work should a person be paid a ” living wage “?
If a person should form a company that employs workers to stand on street corners and squeege windshields 40 hours a week, then yes, those who work for for that company should be paid enough to at least cover basic human needs.
Yes, living wages should be paid to anyone who sits behind a desk at City Hall or anywhere else and tell people sign in or stand in line.
I won`t bring myself down to your level and talk about your third point. Lets get serious and talk about my question to Jerry M.
How is a man supposed to feed his family, pay the rent, PG&E, taxes, and on and on and on, for anything less than a living wage?
David G:
Each person has a different idea of what is a living wage. For some, it means going out to dinner once or twice a week; having a large color TV, a night at the movies, living in an apartment complex that has a community center, swimming pool or whatever.
One should live in an area where he can afford to do so without taxpayer help. Why should taxpayers support someone who wishes to live in an area that he or she cannot afford to do so without taxpayer help? Living wages and affordable housing and “quality affordable” health care are just examples of an ever increasing list of entitlements Americans expect, no demand, today.
If you don’t like your job; then get another one; or go to school to improve your skill set in order to find a better paying job.
> Yes, living wages should be paid to anyone who sits behind a desk at City Hall or anywhere else and tell people sign in or stand in line.
Not only does the particular desk potato in question NOT deserve a living wage, she doesn’t even deserve a job.
The desk potato was the greeter for citizens reporting for jury duty. She barked at me like she was the supervisor of chain gangs in Cool Hand Luke’s prison camp.
She was the poster child for the over-paid, overly job secure non-entitities who comprise goverment bureaucracies from bottom to top.
Union shake-downs of conventions is modern day gangsterism.
The once mammoth COMDEX exhibitions in Las Vegas are no more, a victim of too many grifters demanding too many bribes to lift a finger to move a box from a cart to a table.
COMDEX is now history, and the grifters use their fingers to pick their noses and vote for Harry Reid.
So, did COMDEX change it’s venue from grifter friendly Nevada, to grifter dominated California?
Hold on while I look up the answer.
Don’t grifters use phony names? Sounds like Mr. Strident has issues.
> Sounds like Mr. Strident has issues.
Ummmm. That’s why I made the posting.
Or, was I unclear.
Yeah, Strident, EDP ones
> Yeah, Strident, EDP ones
If you’re sure you know what EDP means, then you must live in a very small world:
Eau de Parfum
Energias de Portugal
Electronic Data Processing
Electricidade de Portugal (Portugal)
Ecuaciones en Derivadas Parciales (Spanish: Equation in Partial Derivatives)
Excessive Deficit Procedure
External Diploma Program
Enterprise Document Presentment
End Diastolic Pressure (cardiology)
Economic Development Partnership
Educational Development Plan
Environmental Differential Pay
Emotionally Disturbed Person (NYPD)
Entrepreneurship Development Programme (India)
Electronic Dictionary Project
Electronic Document Professional (Xplor International)
Event Driven Programming
Energy-Delay Product
English Democrats Party (England)
European Democratic Party
Eating Disorders Program
Engineering Development Program
External Degree Program
Extended Degree Program (Washington State University)
Equipment Distribution Program
Employee Development Plan
Educational Development Program
Enhanced Dot Pitch
Enterprise Development Program
Electron Density Profile
Expedite Departure Path
Engine Driven Pump (hydraulic, aerospace)
Economic Development Professional (Northeast Economic Developers Association)
Eco-Domestic Product
Electronic Data Processor
Engineering Demand Parameter
Enchant Deadly Poison (Ragnarok online gaming)
Emergency Department Physician
Everyday Purchases (credit card rewards program)
English Democratic Party (UK)
Emergency Defense Plan
Extra Duty Pay (various governments)
Event Design Plan
Engineering Development Plan
ELINT Data Processor
Edema Disease Principle
Engineering Drawing Package
Early Departure Procedure (maritime)
Engineering Development Phase
Embedded Data Processing/Processor
Enterprise Development Process
Epoxy Deck Paint
Ethylene-Diamene-Pyrocatechol (etchant solution)
Expedited Drug Program
Emergency Depressurisation
Electronic Detailed Package
Escravos do Presidente (Portugal, band)
Excess Demand Probability
Erratic Dive Profile (SCUBA diving)
Error Detection Probability
Equipment Deadlined for Parts
Exhibit Design and Production (tradeshows)
Every Damn Penny
Explosive Delivered Penetrator
Emergency Dance Party (Internet slang)
Also: 250 other possible meanings:
Economic Development Policy
Economic Development Project
Economics Discussion Paper
Enterprise Developer Program
Economic Development and Planning
Enterprise Data Protection
. . .
Privatizing public goods bothers me. Economic Development, however, is a tricky business. Did building the Arena provide a necessary boost to the rest of the downtown investment? Did we then turn around and give it away to lure and keep a team?
The convention center was large and successful when it first opened. But they made the classic blunder of building good enough for today and assuming there would be no growth. Remember HWY 87, it was great the first week they opened it, and then everyone discovered the efficient new route and those stupid two lanes filled to capacity and it was again faster to take Almaden Expressway. The old model was predict and provide for traffic measures, now its over-promise and under-deliver.
Now lets get to the convention center. It should have included a dedicated revenue stream to operate and expand the center to be and remain competitive and useful. Having over promised, the business outgrew the center and the newly neighborhood centric redevelopment agency saw continued investment as a poor priority. Occupancy taxes were identified as a revenue stream, but that’s been unpredictable.
So after the unionized city workers failed to make the project work as advertised it was spun off in a quasi-autonomous non-governmental entity (made up of either former city staff or people well connected to factions in city leadership positions) and they set out to run it the proper way (as economically unsustainably as the most bloated and inefficient city department.)
Team-San Jose is a microcosm for the management of the City of San Jose. There ability to grapple with complex realities in the marketplace reflects on the cities on ability to do so. If protecting jobs is the highest priority, then the shareholders (taxpayers of San Jose) will see their huge investment squandered for other than what they were promised – namely an economic catalyst that would support the hospitality segment of the new downtown. There is a multiplier that comes with a thriving convention business and it impacts everyone in the local economy such as the non-unionized service workers who are surviving on tips and minimum wage while trying to commute via VTA from Morgan Hill or further. Shouldn’t we focus on the big economic impact that benefits the entire city and not the pro-labor stance the union only work be allowed in exclusive contracts (thus protecting the wages of the most elite of the blue collar workers who probably commute from Morgan Hill in expensive trucks). Unions were and remain important and beneficial in many settings, but they don’t need to become another entitlement vehicle that gets in the way of the basic business of city government.
> Unions were and remain important and beneficial in many settings, but they don’t need to become another entitlement vehicle that gets in the way of the basic business of city government.
Pure, sweet reason.
And a statement of the obvious problem, for which there is no obvious solution.
Unions ARE an entitlement vehicle and they DO get in the way of the basic business of the city and they are NOT going to go away.
You can not put a positive spin on Team San Jose, as they have “no clue” of what it takes to run a Convention Center. It’s all about how much money they can get from the City of San Jose. They bad mouth the City Hall folks when they can’t get 3-4 more million dollars to stay afloat.
TSJ has damaged the city and it’s fine employees beyond repair with Dan Fenton’s TSJ lunatic-antics.
Pete Constant needs to distance himself from Dan Fenton and the ring of evil, that is Team San Jose and the great business Wizzard Dan Fenton. Give me a break…