Inquirer editorial: 'Johnny Doc's' drones are his air farce

With a reported budget of around $10,000 and all the infamy of a single supremely silly YouTube video, Philadelphia union boss John Dougherty's recently revealed drone fleet isn't exactly the Luftwaffe. It is, however, a particularly flighty example of the local labor movement's endless testing of the legal boundaries of intimidation, a favorite tactic that does much to keep the city's reputation and economy close to the ground.

Why does a local electricians' union - unlike, say, a number of small nations - require an air force? Officials with Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers characterize their three drones (with perhaps a fourth acquisition on the way) as a sort of peacekeeping squadron, as the Inquirer detailed this week. We're told that they're meant to monitor construction safety and compliance and report violations. That included undocumented workers at one point, but the union downplayed that possibility after critics noted that immigration status can't be determined on sight. A spokesman did maintain, however, that the air patrols might somehow avert deadly construction accidents.

Fortunately, we already employ whole government agencies devoted to construction code and workplace safety enforcement. And they tend to carry out those tasks with considerably more objectivity than Local 98, whose civic concerns are suspiciously preoccupied with companies that do not employ their members.

Rather than reducing the ranks of the city's scofflaws, Air Dougherty may have joined them. Commercial use of "unmanned aircraft systems" requires special permission from the Federal Aviation Administration, which Local 98 doesn't appear to have obtained. Here's hoping the FAA sees to it that the electricians' ostensible zeal for safety isn't making the city's airspace more dangerous.

Of course, the more likely point of the "IBEW Local 98 Drone Surveillance Program (DSP)" - as the union actually dubs it on YouTube - is, well, surveillance. From there, it isn't a long way to menace. One is reminded of the Philadelphia union members who photographed an executive's children in the course of a vicious campaign against Post Bros.' use of nonunion labor to construct an apartment building in the Loft District.

In Local 98's video, taken at the scene of an inflatable-rat-infested union protest in Center City, the drone's camera scans the streetscape and peers over construction fences to the tune of the 1984 hit "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell, featuring the refrain: "I always feel like somebody's watching me - and I have no privacy." It sounds like Johnny Doc's high technology is aiming rather low.