Chapter 9: Negotiating with the Unions

Sam Thomas was our key person for the Ark’s construction effort in addition to being one of our two lawyers. Sam knew that he would not be able to manage the construction effort without help, so he hired a construction management firm.

The firm pulled our activities together in an organized and logical fashion with Sam’s help. They recommended an architectural firm, which we employed to design the electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and other systems required for living in the Silos. They also suggested several large construction firms for the positions of general contractor. Since our plan was to work on two Silos at the same time, we contracted with two construction firms, one for each Silo.

The construction effort was enormous and neither of the construction firms had an adequate number of employees to do all of the work at their Silo. Therefore, they subcontracted a lot of the work to other companies. There were also specialty firms for installing the elevators, railroad track, the geothermal steam electric generation systems, and other systems. During the initial stages of the construction, the majority of the work was being done by the specialty companies.

The first thing the construction crews did at the Auburn and Drytown Silos was to lay power lines down the Silo’s access tunnel to the transit station and to the area where the power distribution equipment was to be installed. The lines would be used to provide electricity for lights, ventilation fans, and other purposes.

We had decided on setting up Freight Yards at the ends of just the Auburn and Drytown access tunnels. The track laying crew would create a railroad transit system for moving freight between the Auburn and Drytown Freight Yards and the four Silos. They started by laying track in the Auburn Freight Yard to create a loading dock, two railcar parking areas, and a switching system that interconnected the three areas and allowed the engines to be turned around. One parking area would be used to park empty rail cars until they could be loaded for transport to the Silo’s transit station. The second parking area would be used to park the loaded railcars, until an engine towed them to the Silo’s transit station.

Once the track in the freight yard was installed, the tracklayers laid the inbound and outbound lines of track down the access tunnel to the Silo’s transit station and created a network similar to that of the Freight Yard for unloading the freight cars in the Silo. The track laying crew then laid track from the Auburn Silo to the Drytown Silo. The tracklayers created the network for unloading freight in the Drytown Silo, laid track up the access tunnel to the Drytown Freight Yard, and created the network for loading freight in the Drytown Freight Yard.

When the track for the Auburn and Drytown Silos and their Freight Yards was ready for use, the track laying crew laid track to the Chico and Angels Camp Silos, created their loading and unloading networks and laid track to their ‘Freight Yards’. We decided, based on Sam’s analysis, that Angels Camp and Chico did not need full-scale freight yards for construction purposes. These two ‘Freight Yards’ would be used after the meteoroid storm had moved past Earth for transporting passengers and freight between the ‘Freight Yard’ and the respective Silo’s transit station. All of our construction freight would be received at either the Auburn or Drytown Silos and then moved over the transit system to the respective Silo’s transit station. A simple circle with a loading platform was all that was needed for these ‘Freight Yards’.

Our construction freight was palletized and loaded into cargo containers that were delivered to the Freight Yards by truck. An overhead crane offloaded the containers from the delivery trucks and moved the containers to storage locations in the Auburn or Drytown Freight Yard. The crane then loaded an emptied cargo container containing some empty pallets onto the delivery truck for return to the shipper.

The yard workers would be given a list of the next load of construction materials needed in the Silo. A pusher engine would move an empty string of freight cars from the incoming parking area to the loading dock. The yard workers would get the required number of pallets of material from the appropriate cargo containers and load them into the freight cars. When the list was complete or the freight cars were full, the pusher engine moved the loaded string of cars to the outgoing parking area.

An engine pulling a string of empty freight cars would arrive from the Silo and drop its empty string of cars in the incoming parking area. The engine would then hookup to the next string of loaded freight cars and it would take them to the Silo transit station. At the transit station, the loaded cars would be dropped at the incoming parking area for unloading. The engine would then hook up to an empty string of cars at the outgoing parking area and would pull them to the Freight Yard. A pusher engine would move a string of loaded cars from the incoming parking area to the unloading dock. Once the freight cars were emptied, a pusher engine moved the empty string of cars to the outgoing parking area.

As the yard workers unloaded the freight cars at the transit station, they would move the palletized freight to the appropriate work group’s storage area. Each group of construction workers would breakdown their pallets and they would move the freight to their work area for distribution to the workers. The empty pallets were returned to the unloading dock and loaded into an empty freight car for transport to the Freight Yard where they were offloaded into the emptied cargo containers.

None of us was a railroad buff, but we knew enough about locomotives to realize that we did not need the power of a full-sized locomotive. Combining that with the need for an electric locomotive that was compatible with the output voltage and frequency of our electric generation system meant that we had to place a special order to acquire our locomotives. After consulting with GE Transportation and Bombardier, we decided to place our order with Bombardier. The most difficult part of placing the order was determining how many engines we needed to order.

During the early days of construction, we acquired used electric locomotives, passenger cars, and boxcars. We used this equipment until the special ordered locomotives were delivered to our Freight Yards.

The way we planned to move freight during the construction and the provisioning phases, we would need a total of six locomotives for the Auburn and Drytown Silos. After construction and provisioning was complete, we would need to move the inhabitants into the Silos. We would do this using two locomotives at each Silo with six passenger cars per trip. That meant we would need to order eight locomotives to support the transport of resident from the Freight Yards to the transit stations. Once the meteoroids arrived, we would use one or two locomotives to move a string of passenger cars and boxcars between the four Silos. We could also use one or two locomotives to transfer freight from the Freight Yards to the Silos. The remaining locomotives and railcars would be stored and used as spares if an active unit broke down.

I am not sure how many forklifts we needed for the four Silos and two freight yards. From Bob’s recollection, we started out with 80 forklifts for Level 1, 6 per level for Levels 2-13, and 20 per level for Levels 14 and 15, and none for Level 16. We had to order additional forklifts once we started the provisioning effort. That means each Silo had at least 240 forklifts and the Auburn and Drytown freight yards had at least 50 per yard.

Once the track to the Auburn Silo transit station was in place, construction began in earnest on the Auburn Silo. The first thing to be installed was the power generation system.

We initially purchased two new geothermal steam electric generation systems that had been built for nuclear power plants, but never used. We also placed orders for four new high capacity systems for delivery as soon as possible. The electric generation systems initially installed would support construction and would eventually become our backup units; the new units would provide power on a day-to-day basis once they were received and installed.

When I heard about these two geothermal systems having been built for use in a nuclear power plant, I had to ask why. After all the nuclear power plant generated electricity, so why would they want a geothermal power plant? I hadn’t thought of it, but there is always a need for power when the nuclear plant is offline, but there are far cheaper ways to meet this need. That is how I found out that geothermal energy is cheaper to produce than the electricity generated by nuclear power plants. It made me wonder why the power generating companies would build a nuclear power plant, if geothermal electricity is so much cheaper. I was told that geothermal power plants must be sited where the Earth’s magma is close to the surface, and such sites are not common. I was also told that geothermal sites had a limited life for the system’s power generation efficiency dropped as the heat was extracted from the magma in the process of converting water to steam. According to Bob, this was not a problem for us. He and Sharna could make our boreholes as deep as we needed them to be. If the magma cooled, they would just extend the depth of the boreholes.

The company installing the electric generation system went to work preparing the installation site, installing the interim equipment and connecting it to the two boreholes that Bob and Sharna had previously bored; the shafts went down 20 kilometers into the earth’s mantle and were separated at the bottom. The temperature of the earth’s mantle typically increases by 54 degrees Fahrenheit per kilometer of depth, so at 12 kilometers down the temperature of the surrounding rock substrata was around 1080 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the ambient temperature of the surrounding rock strata, which at our depth was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot water was pumped under pressure into the injection borehole. The pressure helped the hot water work its way through fracture lines in the hot rock substrata until it reached the extraction borehole. During its journey through the rock, the water was superheated and became high-pressure steam.

While the electrical plant was being installed, the electrical subcontractor installed the main distribution panel, a sub panel at each Silo level, and interconnected them. Circuit breaker panels would be installed later throughout each level to provide power distribution to electrical outlets, lights, and other devices.

When the plant was in operation, boiling water from a holding tank would be pumped down the injection borehole while super-heated steam rose out of the extraction borehole. The super-heated steam would drive the steam turbine that rotated the electric generator’s drive shaft, which produced the electricity. The steam exhausted from the turbine went to a condenser that turned the steam into boiling water that was pumped into the holding tank. It was basically a closed system but there were a few losses, so we had a makeup water supply to replenish those losses. One of the problems with this type of system is the water can become contaminated with trace amounts of toxic elements such as mercury, arsenic, boron, and antimony, so we had to exercise care to avoid contact with the liquid losses we experienced.

The first major problem we had with the construction effort was the unions.

The prime contractor on the Auburn Silo had subcontracted with several electrical, plumbing, and mechanical installation companies, both union and non-union. Our problem began when a union crew of one electrical contractor started working near the non-union crew of a second electrical contractor. The union workers reported to their crew’s shop steward that non-union workers were employed at the job site.

The union shop steward told the construction manager that the job was a union job and they were not allowed to employ non-union workers. The construction management showed the steward the contract that the union worker’s company had signed to prove that it was a non-union job. The steward kicked the complaint up to his boss, and the problem between the Electrical Union and the construction management company escalated. The Electrical Union bosses notified the Plumbing and Mechanical Unions of the problem and they all agreed that they had been informed that the construction effort was union only. Or at least that is what they said and they refused to admit that the job was open to non-union workers.

Sam and Harry were involved from the start of the problem. The first Clara and I heard of the problem was when Sam gave us a phone call.

“Jon, this is Sam and we have a problem. The union workers and union management are claiming that this is a union-only job. The Construction Manager, Harry, and I have met with their local union bosses and shown them the contracts that specified the job is non-union. They are telling us that the Electrical, Mechanical, and Plumbing companies that hire their union employees informed them that the job was union only. The company owners are telling us they made no such assertion to the unions.