This company makes me HATE unions and I know that may not be fair but man...if this is how all unions are, then I have no idea why unions are necessary other than to destroy entrepreneurship and business.
Just finished the ISSE Beauy Show in Long Beach and had the worst experience with these people. My company was just completely violated by the lady that was walking regulating their mandatory setup labor policy. I have an exhibit booth that I purposely designed to not require a single tool so as to avoid union labor. However, she STILL made us use union labor while threatening to shut down our setup if we didn't. I paid $600 for a guy that took 2 30 minute breaks and chatted up a storm (distracting my employees) while "working" as slow as humanly possible.
When the show was over and my crew began dismantling the booth, the same lady walks around and reminds me that I need to hire union labor AGAIN to dismantle. In the time it took her to go put in a work order and have the guy come to our booth, we were already done dismantling. He saw that we were already done so he went back. The lady comes to our booth and has the nerve to say the following: "you are supposed to wait for the union labor to arrive before dismantling. My guy is going to help you pack up." WHAT?!!!!! The ridiculousness of what she said still makes me shake my head. I told her that there is no way her guy is going to touch our stuff and I walked away. She didn't bother any of the booths around us who were openly dismantling their large booths, ONLY US. This is blatant targeting and bullying.
To the Long Beach Convention Center: DO NOT contract with GES unless you want to have a large, nice, EMPTY building for your next show.