Feel safer New York?

There were two fatal crane accidents in the Big Appletini last year. So, New York City did the responsible thing and passed tough new laws about crane operation and the amount of time one spends learning to run them. A 30 hour class in raising and lowering cranes was among the changes. Of course to union official and crane safety teacher James P. Conway, this new safety initiative didn't matter much. He was STILL all about letting organized crime and other non-qualified doofuses run the cranes.

According to the New York Times, some of the qualified people in apprentice programs were, well, strippers. Who cares, really, only NINE people died in crane accidents last year. Who cares that mob types and strippers are part of the program? According to Conway, one of the real reasons they ran the program the way they did? To keep out minorities;

Mr. Conway said that he believed the union’s testing process, which he acknowledged repeatedly bypassing and manipulating to help mob figures and their family members and the friends and relatives of union members and officials, was used to keep out minority applicants. He described shepherding the cases of two minority applicants through the process, an action that incurred the wrath of one union member whose sons Mr. Conway had tested and failed.

Delightful.