P1000253Note from Art: I love the city of Chicago.  I love the people, the energy and I love the feel of the restaurants and museums and the theaters. However, I don’t love the knuckleheaded political and union wrangling that blares from every news channel in a constant drone of finger pointing and accusations and bone-headed moves. We’re battling insane ex-governors and ridiculous retail sales tax increases in the face of a recession.  One of the latest issues is the backlash and the stream of excuses for the loss of several major conventions due to complaints of usurious pricing and strong-arm tactics.

After losing major conventions to different venues, the local politicos and the brass that run McCormick Place in Chicago are back-pedaling so hard in defense of their labor and service costs that they are contributing to the wind velocity in this already “Windy City.”

It is shameful to watch the officials and local union leaders attempt to defend or deny their usurious pricing and their strong-arm tactics. If you’ve been involved in setting up a show on the floor at McCormick Place before, you would be flabbergasted to listen to the union official on the news blatantly denying that exhibitors are bullied and denied simple things like the right to put a plug in an outlet without union help.

Bull!

I’ve been on the receiving end of having an employee mistakenly plug in a device only to have the union workers complain…stop work and call over a union official to give the booth manager heck.  Additional fees were incurred and the service went from bad to really bad.

Another year, same incident…slightly worse outcome.  There must be something about plugging things in when you work for an electronics company, but yet another well-intentioned employee crossed the union line and was observed pushing a plug into a receptacle.  Same union crap storm followed by a week of suspicious, intermittent power outages and shockingly slow response times. (OK, that was a bad pun!)

  • The reported stories of $50 per gallon coffee…3 gallon minimum, $50 delivery, 20% gratuity and extra handling and service fees are sadly all true.
  • As reported by ABC News, “A plastics exhibitor vented on a trade group website that when he ordered four cases of Pepsi for his booth, McCormick Place hit him with a bill for $345.39.”

The defense from McCormick Place, “These are the industry standards.”

In another example: “The sticker price of soda aside, it’s the labor costs at McCormick Place that rile most exhibitors.  One exhibitor at the recently departed Health Care Information show said the electrical services bill in Chicago reached $40,000. In Orlando, the same work costs $4,000.”

Mayor Daley’s response: “McCormick Place has had a difficult chore in getting and keeping shows unless they get their costs down. It’s as simple as that,” said Daley.

In true Chicago fashion, the head of the Union responds, “We’ve stepped up.”

Keep stepping, buddy.

The Bottom Line:

It’s a big competitive world out there and the good news is that businesses and in this cases marketers and convention-going firms have options.  If I’m Orlando or Vegas or any one of a dozen other venues, I’m all over the Chicago-conventions that have had enough of the expense abuse.

Sad for Chicago in the short-term, but maybe good in the long-term.  A big dose of competition and a shock to the system will either result in the right improvements or things will just deteriorate.  There are few venues that can offer the menu that is Chicago for a conference destination.  Here’s hoping for a great response.  After all, we’ve solved the Governor-picking problem…errr, I mean the sales tax problem….err…. . Oh heck, I hope we fix this one.

Good for free enterprise. Now if only there was an airline (aside from Southwest) that gave a crap about customers.  But that’s another rave for another day.