The Last Union Town

But about those special toilets.

They’re flushless urinals that require no water; gravity does the work, pulling the waste through a filter and then down a pipe and into the sewage system. It’s clean and efficient, and in the Comcast building alone, it would save the city 1.6 million gallons of water each year.

Not so fast, the city’s plumbers union said. Less water means fewer pipes. Fewer pipes mean less work. And so the union blocked the job, threatening the completion of the building, and in turn delaying all the business that would happen inside it. But worst of all was the prospect of losing the title of “tallest green building” to that most dastardly of cities: New York. The Comcast tower would stand 975 feet, only a bit taller than the 962-foot Bank of America building under construction in New York. And the Big Apple’s building came equipped, of course, with the special toilets.

In a stunning testament to the power of Philadelphia’s unions, the city twaddled in the face of the obvious choice: “We’re still looking into this,” the top building code official told the Inquirer at the time. “I want to make sure they’re safe.”

Sounds prudent, except that flushless toilets have long been installed at elementary schools elsewhere in the state, as well as in state government offices. And so far, both children and bureaucrats have remained intact.

One clue to Philadelphia’s paralysis lies in the city’s building code: Philadelphia is, for example, said to be the only large city in America that doesn’t call for PVC pipe as the standard plumbing material. It still calls for cast iron. PVC is cheaper, lighter and longer lasting. But one plumber can carry 10 lengths of PVC pipe; it takes 10 plumbers to carry a length of cast iron.

One reason for the political, financial and social strength of the building trade unions in Philadelphia is that construction — unlike textiles, say, or automotive work — can’t be outsourced overseas. So without competition in the market, the building trades maintain a powerful grip on one of the citizenry’s most basic needs: shelter.

Philadelphia’s unions have such a hold on construction costs in the city that they — unlike home prices, unlike job salaries and taxes — can disobey the market. So the city’s residents and businesses are squeezed between economic reality on one side, and unions on the other: lower home values, higher building costs.

Knowing the power of the trade unions, the developers of the “green” Comcast tower had little option but to strike an absurd deal: The Comcast tower got its new toilets. But only because it also got a full set of old-fashioned pipes, installed by union plumbers. The pipes run throughout all 58 floors, just like in any other skyscraper.

Except in the Comcast tower, they’re not connected to anything.

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