Peter Striano — Unity International Group

Well, I began, if I want to start there, as an electrician.

As an electrician, then I did not want to be.

When I came out of this service, as I wanted to go into the CIA and the FBI, and my father told me in his wisdom that I should not walk away from the opportunity to become an electrician.

So he introduced me to local number three in the IBW, Harry Van Aasnell, and the entire board of local three.

And I went up on a personal interview, which my father was astonished that I was speaking freely with these heads of state, as he called.

He was quite nervous when I was there.

And I was very comfortable speaking to people like this, because they just come out of college and I felt that I will have to say what I have to say.

He was very much in awe of my review.

We finished his support.

You did a good job.

You didn't stop talking.

Well, they were asking me good questions, and I told them very simply, I would like to get involved.

As a matter of fact, Mr.

Al Mackie, who was the director of the assistant president of the union, said to me, I would like you to be very much involved in union activities.

So you want to move you into the organizing group of local three, and maybe you could go out there and organize an electrical contract.

So I said, this is something I do not want to do to myself.

I want to get into the business.

So I became an apprentice and through the apprentice program, I tried to be very, very aware of my ability to practice the best, best matter and the best efficiencies in doing electrical installations.

I learned quickly how very good mechanics have taught me, and as a result, I was very pleased.

I moved very quickly through the whole organization at a point where now I was leading the mechanics.

Then the opportunity came where an M.

Isenberg and brothers that I became known as the lead mechanic of the company moved quickly into Foreman, and when I was just graduating from school in local number three, and I was given my card as an age journeyman, they gave me the podcast to do a 96th Street Park Avenue, and the Foreman who had the job, performing, had some serious illness, and I took off his operation, and I was successful in doing what I had to do.

From there, I moved right through the system, and Albert Isenberg always was a tyrant as a leader.

He was very difficult to work for, but he found me to be the cutting edge of what he wanted as a foreman.

I did Lupe Chevrolet, we installed all the work for Lupe Chevrolet, and not a job he said to me, I like to make you super-intended of Law Island.

I was challenged several times because I was the youngest kid on the block, I was about 30, maybe 30 years old, and I had been working there who were 45, 50, 60, and none of them accepted me easily.

I had approved myself all the way, but that's the story of business.

You must prove yourself before you're accepted.

So I made very sure that everything I told them what to do, and how to do it, I was correct in what I did.

When I moved through that, then became the super-intended for all of New York and Log Island.

Then, as we grew in the company, I realized that Mr.

Isenberg was going on a very aggressive path to sell his company, and I wasn't pleased about the rapid, I guess, buys he was making on various buildings, 22, Portland, 747, 3rd Avenue, and a bunch of others, and I said the prices are too low.

Eventually, he's going to implode.

So I decided to leave.

I left that, and then I wanted to have a call, a watch trial electric with Irving Weinstein, and that lasted five years.

We were absorbed by the Damien Corporation, and the Damien Corporation looked upon us as the installers of firelocks, because that was what they would do.

They merged with firecraft, fire company, and us as the installers, it was a perfect fit.

This is when the city of New York went bankrupt.

So everything kind of slowed down around 1975, and I decided, best I get myself into a new position.

So I left, and found a company called Unity Electric, so I came up with enough money by borrowing everything I could from my uncles and father-in-law, and I had a down payment, much of my surprise.

When we started this business with six men, they were doing maintenance for banks, and at that time, Chaseman had banked just started a program of ATMs, and the ATMs were coming out so rapidly that their design was not correct.

And the power that I have in terms of this business, I just enjoyed very much going over the drawings and redesigning it, so it's better than what it was on paper.

I did that over and over and over again.

We had probably a success rate of about 75% to 80% of all the ATMs that come out of New York.

And we made a very decent margin on that.

And going back, they had a security system that was not designed properly, and this is how the level of contracting can get involved with the client when he's close to what's happening.

It sent to me, you know, there's a problem with this security system.

A woman comes and she swipes her card and the door opens for the ATM.

She goes in the ATM and takes all her, makes a business transaction.

She then goes over to the door, swipes the card again, puts her bag on the floor, because back up the bed, the door is locked.

Most of the timing is so critical.

You have to give us a time delay.

So I went to a friend of mine in the alarm business, and they said, Shelley, you have to help me out.

We have to decide something here, and I need space to do it.

So I put his arm on the desk, and he cleared all the junk off the desk, and he says, Peter, this is all yours.

So I sat there for about three hours and I designed my own system.

That system became the standard for all of the ATMs that was in Brooklyn and Queens at the time.

And it was an incredible win for me, because we helped out security, we got this thing running, and the ATM program went on and on and on without any issues.

It got to a point where anybody changing in the ATM would call us first and say, what is this all about, tell me you approved this.

On the ATMs, we wanted to chase plaza, which is a huge chase building, and we began doing some data work in there.

And we had some resistance from the contract that I was in the building, but we still haven't became that, because the quality of our work was so extremely up from the contract that was doing the work, the quality and design and labeling and so on.

John Ciccatella, who was a senior vice president at that time, walked into the training floor, and he saw the work we did over the weekend, he says, who in the world did this?

It can't be the company that said this building.

He's a new guy, he's going to give him all the work.

Just a simple thing of doing a job correctly, doing it with a certain amount of pride and dignity, we got all the work, and eventually the other contract had to leave, and we've been in the chase, I guess, now for 20, 23, 24 years, doing all the work that expanded from that.

Chase had the training floor, there was a 17th floor, there was a training floor there, and they had a huge machine, it looked like a billboard that you would see in a baseball park, and it was all motorized.

Monas were driving, the numbers, the models were driving, the sales, the models were driving the whole thing, so that when the market was up, the machine lifted in pitch and intensity and had a certain beat to it.

When that happened, all the traders would focus on this and say, we got a good day coming.

They would stay there and stay there so finally, they were very happy about what was going on.

The one complaint that the engineers and design people said, it makes too much noise, that's to change it to an electronic board.

We did, the traders wrote a letter of protest, they do not know it's going on on the trays because they did not hear the music, the beat, so you have to work with them, so we had to put background music in to simulate the machines, let them know that they're very busy, but this is about client relationships.

We had another case where the floor where they had a trade going in and across the street was at Federal Reserve.

And Wolfgang Schokoff was a man of charge at that at the time, smoked big cigar, and when the runner was on, he would wait till the last couple of minutes to get the bid in across the street by 3 o'clock, so as the runner was picking up all the receipts in the training floor, which is quite huge, not too long for them long, sometimes he would get caught up at people and not be able to get to the elevator at the time and miss the trade.

So he said, I want you to put runner on lights on the training floor, throughout the whole aisle that the runner runs on a stall, any of those syncronic stuff.

But it's kind of things that people say, well why would you bother with something like that?

Isn't that an engineer's job?

No, no.

If you're tired out with the client and that's what I'm trying to tell everyone, the client there's no limit to what we can do to service them.

So the detail of what all this happens keeps us in the limelight with JP Morgan Chase and they don't forget they had 3 emerges and we're still there doing most of their work and the quality of what we do.

And all the way through this, my theory was, my philosophy was, I should say, that we should not just apply ourselves to electrical work per se.

The data communication is very big.

So the other part of that is the other divisions that we have, such as uni data, which is a service company, when we were moving from New York City to Metro Tech.

I was sitting at a table and everyone was deciding about this move of how difficult it's going to be to move 1,500 people into this building from remote sites.

So I raised my hand and they said, I would have no difficulty in doing that.

Well, you're all electricians.

I said, no, we have a company called uni data.

And uni data will be able to take everything off the desk, the pictures, the various works of art.

So I put them in a box, label the desk, the move is then take the desk and move it in its entirety to the new location at Metro Tech.

We come in, open up the box, put everything just as it was because they took a photograph of it before.

And we move almost 1,500 people into this building with flawless.

These are stock traders.

These are stock traders, back in the house business, everything you can imagine.

And of the 600 people, I guess maybe 800 were doing that.

Then we put in a security system.

We put in a closed circuit TV, the grand opening, the roofing cutting, but this floor was open.

I brought a box of store burgers and the model of champagne to the director because everybody was in a very party mood.

So I brought it into his office and I said, I'd like to show you what we put in.

And he cut the ribbon and looked at the TV and said, oh my God, you mean all these people work for me?

He was astonished.

Oh my God.

Okay.

So it was something that you give you great pride to understand because there's a little bit of humor and everything.

But this business is a very difficult business because it's heavily competitive and sometimes the market goes up and down and people need work so they think it at a different level and you have to know how to push back and say I can't do that because there's no way I'm going to be able to make money on that job.

So that's where judgement calls come in and that's where it makes the difference between a successful business and a successful business.

Remember cash flow is the heartbeat of the business and if you're taking three or four jobs that are very tight, then a fourth job is disaster.

You have a problem on your hand because it can really hurt you in many ways.

But again, I personally interviewed everybody I felt was going to join this company and be a part of what we're doing.

Everyone who was a senior vice president, putting yourself, I had personal contact with all my, all my foreman that worked for me, a handpicked and I know I assist in many ways if there's a child that needs some help, if there's someone that needs some surgery, if there's someone that needs medical assistance, we do what we can in the company to provide them with any support we can.

That gives us a distinct advantage because people respond well when they care and when you care and that's the difference between us and a lot of other contractors.

And I am pleased to tell you that we opened an office in London, in London everything changes.

It's a metric system and you're dealing with the philosophy of how people in London work.

So what I did, I went to London and I looked at the space, this was a magnificent, beautiful building.

I went there and I sat there with General Contractor and they had a bullpen where everyone existed.

Engineers, architects, there was no delay in anything being approved.

I said this is going to be a very streamlined job.

I walked over to the table with about 25 people sitting around it and the man who was the director of the meeting said to me, I don't have you on my agenda, I said well, I was sent here by Jessica Teller to look at drawings and I don't have any information, we already have prices.

I said, I'm astonished that you have prices based on the drawing.

Are they the same as ours?

You showed me.

But you're missing streets and avenues of classes, there's so much left out of these drawings.

So they began talking to each other at the table and soon everyone was busy in a huff talking to each other trying to find out what am I driving at.

They left the table.

This gentleman who was the director said, I've been doing this for 20 years.

I've never had my meeting broken up, it's just kind of trash.

Sorry, but JB and B was the engineer and I said that look, it's important that us having this drawing.

They realized that I was right.

Next morning, when their office had the drawings, two days later we went into the engineer's office for data communications, we had their drawings, took them back to New York and two weeks later we were on water at the job on a bit.

Okay, because they did things differently than we do, but we found out how they do it.

In any case, now I figured out, well, I went back in three weeks later and I went back to London.

I was trying to figure out how in the world am I going to do this now?

At the time, the local three was on furloughs.

So I know I had a cadre of furloughs and I can move over there.

So I went there and I picked my form and general form and all the way through and I read to the house in Blackheath which is one train stop away from the job and I thought this sort of thing.

I said, if the boys go out and have a good time the night before, all they have to do is follow a train and go one stop, drag themselves off and go to work.

So we managed to understand their philosophy.

So in a matter of fact, I was asked to save a lot of money in the job and it was over-designed.

So I said, if you were designed as all these cable trains in the floor, you really don't need them.

We just put the cable on the floor like we do in the yard and we saved them almost $300,000 which was something they appreciated very much.

So the engineers who were on the job were very upset with what I did.

They said, you know, this is wrong, they want to save money, that's what we did.

Let's all go after dinner tonight.

That's one thing an English person will never do is walk away from the good dinner.

So we took all after dinner and then we went to this satay restaurant and they had no idea for it.

So I was on my own element and I ordered everything they should have and they were in heaven.

Everything they ate was very, very pleasing to them.

At the end they said, we'd like to have pork, that's not tonight, you've got to be drinking grappa.

So they started banging down, drinking grappa and as the night wore on, I noticed they were slurring their words and all things for that nature.

The next day they all came in wearing black armpits.

It's just not what it's done.

So I knew a bond that was created and that's what you have to do to break the dam of resentment and differences of opinion, find a way to get through and that's what they did and everybody is very happy about it.

They still talk about it in this day.

Job was probably one of the best jobs we've ever had because we made sure that the English people treated with dignity and we were treated with dignity because we were the largest job in London and we're doing it with Americans.

We can understand how resentment had been at a very high level.

So we come back to that and then London kept going and we're concentrating now on New Jersey with a lot of work going on there.

We now have a help desk that runs out of uni data that takes care of all of the JPMorgan Chase work and we are now in UPS facility in Georgia and we're here in New Jersey.

And all of this we were told that they want us to bid the Yankee Stadium of course.

We've been terminal number four Kennedy Airport and Harry Olsen was the director of terminal number four.

A lot of problems with that job but we got into it and resolved every one of his problems.

So when the Yankee Stadium came up we'd bid the job of the Turner, got to work and we're very happy about it and then something happened with the contract that it was doing in the maintenance for the Yankees and they said to us, would you like to do the main thing and it's of the Yankees in the old field and then when the new field is finished you may be a candidate for the new field.

We did such a good job in the old field that they automatically transfer us to the new field.

And now we do all the work for the new Yankees and it's an honor for me to say that because I really consider it a very fine excellent client really nice people and the Yankees they're a good client and we have what kind of standard set up for them and then doing this you know you receive recognition from the community which is nice saying charge university, saying Francis University, boys and girls, towns of Italy, the Bishop Humanitarian Award, all these things come to you when you begin to help give it back.

That's the way I always felt, I always felt as you begin to grow you have to find some way to give back to other people who are less fortunate and it was a president of Strathmore Vanderbilt Country Club and then the Tiro Senno, New York City, the old Thai and American club in the country and I'm on the board as an geriatric foundation but all these are extremely time consuming but it's a good thing because you have a chance to meet a lot of other people who are doing other very nice things and it's like elevating yourself into an area of five people who their position in life is to aid other privileged, aid people who are under the stress and so on.

So that's the piece that I like and of course the best part of my story is I'm married now to Caroline Striano and we have three daughters, Rosa, Alisa and Christine and we have six grandchildren so I'm a proud grandfather and my wife is constantly involved with these children and I'm very happy about how the whole family is working together as a unit.

I met a lot of nice people through the business and it was a lot of entertaining, quite enjoyable.

We saw a lot of New York and I finally convinced them to buy a place in New York because we were always in Manhattan.

You didn't tell me when I went into the Army and came back out, I thought I saw you walking by a bar that I was hanging out in and that's how he called me.

I met him in college.

A level eight, four, three, four, three was a number, a couple years ago, 1190 grand time.

Anyway, we met in college and then he went into the Army and I didn't hear from him but then he thought he saw me, it was not me and we got together and here we are, 55 years later.

That's great.

Three beautiful daughters, six grandchildren, four boys and two girls.

Very busy life, still busy, but he's still busy, he'll never retire, right?

No, that's what gets him up in the morning.

What would you say that, what was the driving force that made this business a success between the two of us?

How did that work?

I think you loved people and your work hard, wasn't 95, that's for sure.

And you'll get things done.

The primary reason, of course, as far as I'm concerned, that she, Caroline, was a catalyst in entertaining the wives of the people that we took out for birth.

It isn't fun razors and so on, they fell in love with her and much of the time they would call them, you're coming to this event, right?

Yes, I'm coming.

Make sure you bring Caroline.

Yes, of course I bring Caroline.

So I was, you know, treated like an afterthought but I got used to it.

Anyway, it's been fun.