Down on the field, I saw as the players were stretching out in helmets, t-shirts and shorts. "Reminds me of a high school boyfriend," I told Gene as we took a seat on one of the benches that made up a lot of the so-called cheap seats. Spartan Stadium had been built with a very old fashioned feel, but still had a lot of high tech and modern conveniences. "He played football when I was a junior."
"Oh? Knowing you, he was the star quarterback."
I chuckled and shook my head. "Nope, wrong there. Actually my boyfriend at the time wasn't even a starter, he played backup defensive end and a lot of special teams. We first started talking because of a time like this."
"What do you mean?" Gene asked. He sat down on the bleacher bench next to me, his eyes on the field. "Wasn't paying attention at practice?"
"No, actually he was the most dedicated guy on the team. Showed up early, made every off season lift, everything like that. But we had a pretty stacked team that year, and the guys in front of him were two seniors who ended up both of them going on to play Division I ball. So Alex sat the bench a lot. Anyway, a couple of my girlfriends and I used the stadium to run back then, and he and I started talking after one of these Thursday walk-throughs. We dated for most of my junior year."
"What happened senior year?" Gene asked curiously.
"Simple. Like I said, he was the most dedicated guy on the team. When it came time to choose between football and me, I was always second. I couldn't deal with that any more, so we just broke it off amicably," I said. "But enough on me. Gene, have you been catching flack from Francine Berkowitz?"
"If you mean have we had union reps around here trying to get everyone from the janitor to the popcorn vendor trying to join the various union s, then yeah, but nothing different than usual," Gene replied. "They've been trying to crack us ever since the strike back in '99. The owners are standing pat though, no union s other than the Player's Association. They don't care if it costs us twice as much to do things. I assume you don't quite have that much leeway in your operations budget."
I tilted my head, chuckling. Mark had plenty of money, but he didn't have the operating budget of a professional football team backed by a textile manufacturing powerhouse. Then again, we didn't have shareholders to answer to either. "Not quite. I'm trying to take a balanced approach to this. I've told her, I'm not outright rejecting any participation by union workers. Hell, if they do good work at a good price I'll have nothing but union workers. But I'm not going to hamstring the non-union companies with the union 's bid-rigging crap either."
"So she's trying to drown you in paperwork," Gene replied. "She did the same to us last year when we renovated the bathrooms on the upper deck. Simple enough job, just going to modern urinals and toilets, should have been a simple two month job from start to finish. City inspectors and everyone else turned that thing into a six month headache. We barely got the damn thing finished less than a week before the first preseason game."
"But you kicked off on time," I said. "So is that a pattern?"
Gene nodded. "Pretty much. If you have power, she'll hamstring you, delay you, try and just wear you down until she can expose a weakness to exploit. Thankfully the league is supportive of us, and the players are fine with it as long as we take care of them. The stadium workers know that, by law, we can't prevent them from union izing. Did you know that the security guard who let you in the door, he makes fifty six thousand a year with full team benefits? Guy goes to the same doctor I do. Anyway, my advice is to continue the same way. Treat your contractors well, and you'll find workers for you. The union works off of public perception just as much as the Spartans do. They know this. As long as they can harass and frustrate you without coming off looking like assholes, Berkowitz is going to be a bug in your ass the whole time. But as soon as she thinks that public light will make them look bad, she'll have the union guys fall back until the next fight."
"And how long will that fight go on?" I wondered.
Put it like this, I’ll tell you when ours is over, and that might give you an idea. So far we've been fighting them for nearly two decades."
"Damn."
Gene nodded, and we watched the field for a while longer. It was a lot simpler, football that is, compared to the headaches I was dealing with at the time.
* * *
I got home late that night, nearly nine at night, as I wanted to start looking over contractors for the first of the community centers. The first building, in the heart of The Playground, needed to be cleaned out, and I wanted to find a general contractor to get that done as soon as possible. If Francine Berkowitz was going to continue to be a thorn in my side, I might as well damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead, after all.