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  • I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker, and I'm about to show you a clip from a documentary film I made as a young guy back in 1965 in New York City, involved with union negotiations.

  • So many of my subscribers have seen this clip from the documentary before and have asked me, How could you do this?

  • Where did you do it?

  • Why did it happen?

  • So I'm going to answer that question.

  • So think about 1965.

  • 16 millimeter, very heavy camera with a wire connected to the sound audio recorder, a Nagra £26 a boom mic, one bull Mike and 1 12 to 1 20 millimeter zoom lens.

  • That's May.

  • That's the moment.

  • How did I get this scene?

  • So I'm at the f f L C I.

  • A local union negotiation between I think, the City of New York on the Union, but you guys around the room smoking cigarettes like crazy.

  • But at that time we will breathe in that stuff, and I say to them guys, you've got to make this real.

  • Documentaries are riel, and yet you don't film reality.

  • You got a stage reality, so why would you to create live here right now.

  • What would be a union negotiation?

  • So in answer to your questions, that's how this was shot.

  • It wasn't just accidental.

  • They knew what they were doing.

  • They knew the camera was there.

  • Of course, people in front of the camera always know that the cameras there, that's one of my strong views towards documentaries.

  • There is no truth.

  • There's just a reality created by people with a camera president trying to show what life is like for them negotiating this garbage contract.

  • I think so.

  • Take a look.

  • I think you'll enjoy it.

  • It's pretty dramatic.

  • And the people, well, they're rough then New Yorkers.

  • There are a lot of New Yorkers still like that.

  • But I'm a New Yorker.

  • I come from New York.

  • They're my people.

  • They're the people I grew up with, the people I knew at the moment they didn't seem all that rough to me.

  • But now that I've traveled the world and lived so many places, I guess they are.

  • What do you think?

  • You know, I Any equipment in the park department would be in fire three and shops are out in the field.

  • The truck belongs to the motor vehicle operate instead.

  • That's their title in the city of New York To drive all equipment for the city of New York, you have a man get $15,000 driving a vehicle, which is out of title, and a man is sitting down $7000.

  • That's all he gets.

  • Starting salary on Mordovia clapping.

  • Wind up in the city.

  • Put in motor vehicle operator on that truck for $7000 writing to have a man.

  • It's a qualified tree surgeon.

  • $13,000 riding behind the wheel of a truck driving a truck.

  • What is he doing?

  • Let's get that straight.

  • Everything goes way higher, fire cemented, drive to try trust or that we have more way.

  • Have more of it.

  • That's you are a type of station of a crew service.

  • I've taken show you were struck down in its £20,000.

  • That's a motor vehicle, operated a responsibility to a city street is, and you have to have professional man behind out.

  • Well, you know, I don't take special.

  • Let's get back to me, is not a you're not a city.

  • New York had taken examination.

  • You are a simple looking now.

  • Tom Lowe.

  • You noticed?

  • But I put a stop before the partner price.

  • Now, three years ago, when I went to a meeting and she told me that she was gonna look into this.

  • And how's things taken?

  • Care not a thing was done.

  • Go around New York and see what's being done in a lot of a lot because of lack of coverage.

  • And you've got your labors that belongs playground driving vehicles all over the city.

  • You are.

  • Get them off.

  • But you know what?

  • He saved money on the way Seriously.

  • Yeah, I know.

  • It's a beautiful productivity back in city both.

  • Baby, I'm your money.

  • You can make money.

  • You can like some little Dave.

  • I want Mrs Driving in city whole double of the M V O guys.

  • And they sit on their s much better cause they got bigger ball, right?

  • Yes, that's right.

  • I watched your sprint save you.

  • First of all, as I said before, you don't have it in your contract.

  • Every time you commit the negotiations, you want that provisioning and the city will not agree to it.

  • You've got sanitation plant against the wall, not getting anything that plane against the wall.

  • You got free labor that should be in different parts.

  • Department working.

  • And you've got running around a city doing nothing short of the store.

  • Nothing.

  • I think I think you're very important.

  • Point efficiency and productivity works both ways.

  • Some of the most inefficient practices come from you guys.

  • I don't have to tell you about the high court's drivers.

  • Jimmy was just mentioning it to you.

  • Now.

  • It seems to me we want to get one house in order.

  • We want to get them all in order.

  • If you don't want him sitting on his dust.

  • We don't want a 13,000 $12,000 a year man driving the vehicle.

  • Maybe efficiency from your side can match efficiency from outside.

  • No, let's go a little further than that on somebody.

  • Small agencies.

  • We only have a few win videos and they drive a commissioner or maybe a deputy majority of the time.

  • He's just sitting in the office and when he sits in New York, but he don't sit by himself.

  • He's sitting and he talks to somebody else, so I don't have just one person doing nothing.

  • I end up with two people doing nothing you say.

  • If these fellows driving these big commissioners to sit around doing nothing I have to differ with you have been doing it for 19 years and I'm in sanitation.

  • I've been driving a big voices.

  • I've been bringing people to wear throat that can never stand still.

  • Every time I maybe I want to do something different, give me a little of production with it and stop by somebody else.

  • It's not our job.

  • You're not supposed to do it.

  • So we're joined the show.

  • Productive In what?

  • You're doing it.

  • That's what we want.

  • But everybody isn't like you.

  • Well, you're ready.

  • No, no, don't go.

  • Well, okay, my NGO Sanitation.

  • Chris, I wanna move on.

  • Hold on.

  • Wait for me just one second.

  • Want clarification?

  • He's under the opinion that a doper sits on it, but now I Honestly I just don't I know you Did You ever drive a truck around a city?

  • New York?

  • Try it someday.

  • Save you're sitting on your butt doing nothing.

  • I'll get a minute.

  • You want wild group?

  • You way wild, we are.

  • Everyone knows it's nonsense, but they play the game.

  • We talk about increased efficiency and productivity.

  • Well, it'll have to start with the mayor first was terribly inefficient.

  • And then let's work it out and you know something.

  • You'll get all the increased efficiency, all the increased productivity, and you won't get gigantic wage increases.

  • Guess what?

  • There will not be enough money to run the city because the real contradiction the real dispatch people want more and more service, more cops on the beat, smaller classrooms for their kids, better highways.

  • And then when it comes to paying for it to hell with I was telling John, seriously, I was just saying that we come down to this hole every year with the same crisis that your chief executive visits on it.

  • Seriously.

  • One the hell is this.

  • There's gotta be some sense to a budget in this fan.

  • Your own members are paid with your pension.

  • Plans are over.

  • Almost had the best punch, but still you're way ahead of a comparable workers elsewhere.

  • It's in our private area, not enough, probably of our tribute to your leadership, but also a tribute to the political, a cloud that your group has had and this is complicated.

  • Our problems Cop gave the problem.

  • New York City, where we're getting too tough of seriously, we're We're going in this very frankly, this session, the governor's got the only viable plan that should be an actor.

I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker, and I'm about to show you a clip from a documentary film I made as a young guy back in 1965 in New York City, involved with union negotiations.

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