[quote=flu]
I mean, I have this anti-union sort of bias that I think of the stereotype image of a bunch of union workers sitting on their asses all day doing nothing and complaining….
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FLU: Speaking of anti-union bias: I never had an anti-union bias until I actually started working with unions and union workers.
Case in point. I did a pair of retrofits for a client with facilities in Michigan and Colorado. Both projects were completely identical, I mean right down to the bolt specifications. However, in Michigan, we had to use union labor and in Colorado we didn’t.
The difference in labor costs was astounding. We paid nearly $600k for labor in Michigan and $470k for labor in Colorado and for identical jobs, with identical scopes of work. The non-union project went off without a hitch, but the union job was a frickin’ nightmare. We had supervision issues (they tried to charge us for three supervisors to watch eight employees, when only one supervisor was necessary), work stoppage issues (they would stop work at the slightest change in scope of work), and were constantly threatened with litigation (they tried to claim slip-and-fall when one of their guys had his foot slip from the second rung of a ladder and said that his knee was “blown”). Absolutely infuriating, especially when these clowns would come to work in hard hats proudly displaying the American flag and claiming that “union labor built the USA”. Maybe so, but this generation of union labor sure as shit didn’t. They weren’t just lazy, they were criminally stupid, too.
That was unfortunately the first of now dozens of projects where I’ve had to deal with unions and, nearly without exception, those same experiences have repeated themselves.
We’re now fundamentally an unserious country. The nation that beat the Germans, Japanese and the Soviets and put a man on the moon, cannot figure out how to cap an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. We wring our hands and point fingers and speechify, but don’t DO shit.
Sorry to vent, but this crap drives me crazy. Get the fucking lawyers and politicians and lobbyists and “advocates” and psychologists the hell out of the way and let those of us that want to work and succeed and excel do exactly that.
