Union or Non union

[Taylortractornu]

Im not sure if this is the righ part of the forums to place this under but I was given another chance to get into the Union here again. I was in one operators union for about a week and got fired be cause I sat in an excavator because the riggers and Iron workers wuld move a load of rebar in the way. I got the proper chokers and slings and picked one bundle up and the next 2 seconds a Union super visor was giving me a good a$$ chewing.
the next dy I ast 3 hours in one spot waiting for the same thing and the boss told me not to move it so I walkd the hoe over it. I didnt really give a darn because i hate sitting not doing any thing. The next thing that got me was the steel workers were inexperienced and i had gotten off to help them square some posts while they I was waiting for more sand. The third and final killer of my job was the next day I had a line blow out on the hoe ram cylinder and I went to my truck and got a 2 inch wrench and removed the hose while waiting for a mechanic. so my write up said I was being fired fore doing a riggers job, the steel workers job, and the mechanics job, and there was some mention of moving a truck crane 400 feet without a teamster. My question is Are all Union jobs like that? Dad has worked 48 years in dirt moving without a union. Dad and brother also taught me how to do several jobs and Ive also been paid to do more than one job when I was able to. I just couldn believe ho mad they were over the hose, they werent one bit mad at the Rebar I walked over. The truck crane had to be moved as the concrete was onsite and the nearest Teamster was about 45 minutes away. Im not really one the likes to be around red tape and all.

[DKinWA]

My business isn't union since it's only me, but in my full time job I'm a union member and vice president. From my experience, some unions are like that and others aren't. I think it has a lot to do with how big the project is and how well you know the folks you're working with. I know a lot of folks in the construction trades and most of the time they're working smaller projects (<12 on the jobsite) and don't see crossing lines as a big issue. Much of the time it's one trade lending a hand to another trade so someone doesn't get hurt. Other times it's to help someone to keep things moving along.

Personally, if I was a union operator sitting around waiting for a load of rock or something, I'd have a hard time sitting still. I'd be just as inclined to park the machine and jump down and give the pipe fitter or carpenter a hand with what they're doing. I think it makes the job go faster and it also gives you a chance to get to know the folks you're working with. It also breaks up the monotany of doing the same job day in and day out.

If you can, I'd talk to some other operators in the union and see what they have to say. There are some definite benefits such as training opportunities, health care, etc, but there can also be downsides such as you described. Good luck with your decision.

[Steve Frazier]

I was a Teamster for 20 years and found myself in the same position you describe. My Dad raised me to always put forth my best effort, yet I was constantly critisized for this on union jobs. I was always catching flack for working too hard and to "leave some work for tomorrow".

I got to where I would punch in, do my job, and go home. I didn't socialize with the men like many did, I had an entirely different set of values and was uncomfortable. The attitude among them was "Screw the company", but this company was paying my bills!

After 160 years, 20 of which I worked for them, the company folded. I didn't bother calling the hall for any work, I started my own business and haven't looked back.

[Blademan]

Wow , sounds like a fiasco . I've been union ( local 955 operating engineers ) for 16 years now , and have never run into what you describe . I imagine on some of the bigger jobs , people and egos can get very mixed up , and its sad . But , it does happen and i believe for a reason too . BUT , I've also been on non union jobs where people are worked to the bone and discarded like a old fast food wrapper with no concideration of there efforts or skills . THAT fustrated me , but to others , they seem to have gotten used to it . Anyway , for me personally , the part of the union I like is that they maintain a higher level of wages for the industry . Around here , work can be turned on or off like a water tap , and some folks , non union , would pay peanuts to there workers if they could . But it seems in order to keep all the players and playing field balanced , unions set a base hourly rate , and most either follow it or get the dregs of the operators . I also like the bennefits and retirement pension that seems more and more important in this unstable economic environment we are living in . It brings a little peace to me as the years to retiremnet get closer . Don't get me wrong though , I'm not entirely 100% pro union . I know it's not for everybody , I'm just happy because if they weren't here , I know the owers of some of the larger construction outfits would just keep taking advantage of the " little guy " . Been there , seen it , moved on . Sooooo , Taylortractornu , I guess like the advice given before me by DKinWa , head down to the union office and talk to them about your concerns and worries . Talk to some of the older guys , both union and non ,and see what they have to say . And good luck with your decision .


Rob

[cat320]

I have got to say i have heard that same story before.I'm not union nor have I ever been but it seams that union guys love how the system works by passing the buck ,having to wait for a different crew to do one thing.I think back when unions were first started they worked but now adays i think it's more of a money making thing for union leaders and the guys that are in it don't work as hard as non union guys .

[nobull1]

Originally posted by Steve Frazier
I was a Teamster for 20 years and found myself in the same position you describe. My Dad raised me to always put forth my best effort, yet I was constantly critisized for this on union jobs. I was always catching flack for working too hard and to "leave some work for tomorrow".

I got to where I would punch in, do my job, and go home. I didn't socialize with the men like many did, I had an entirely different set of values and was uncomfortable. The attitude among them was "Screw the company", but this company was paying my bills!

After 160 years, 20 of which I worked for them, the company folded. I didn't bother calling the hall for any work, I started my own business and haven't looked back.
Well said My opinion which is not popular with a lot of people but it is my opinion.The best people won't last with a union for a few reasons, no reason to do above and beyond,have to carry the slackers"to have them paid the same",how long you been there more important than how good you are.I realize doesn't pertain to all so give me a break.There are many others but there is a equal amount for unions such as rate of reasonable pay for union and non alike due to unions,security,benifits.seniority for jobs,pensions,etc So my opinion is if you are a go getter you will get bored pretty quick and can "usually" make as much as a union man just have to find the right company[or work for yourself] most employers will pay a premium for good people with drive.Union pays the same to all good or bad, I myself could not deal with that been there done that. Good Luck

[PAYTON]

well ive worked both.. union labor.. non union operator and union operatory and for the most part the biggest difference i see is quality of pay.. ive meet sum guy who are non union who are great.. and ive meat sum who couldnt hit the ground with both sides of a blade... and ive also seen the same with union..

around here non union 15 bucks is the best u could ever hope to make.. as union i make 25ish so thats 10 dollars a differnece plus benefits..

as far as unions being good or bad.. they have there place.. and thats the truth.. like it or not.. unions usually help decided non union wages.. now do i say the union has sum worthless operators yes it does..
does it have sum lazy members yes it does.. are all opertaors like that .. no..

me for example ive been in trouble for helping a labor out on the job site.. would i do it again.. yes i will.. does it stop me from being me.. no.. theres a point where things have gotta get done.. if it requires helping sum one else.. then so be it..as far as a teamster to move a crane thats ********.. ive never heard that **** b4 .. but differnet locals have different rules.. so i dunno on that ..im not claiming to be a die hard union member cause im not .. they dont pay my bills when work is slow.. i do..

unions has there benefits

payton

[Blademan]

I agree Payton , the company I worked for wanted us to be able to do what was neccesary to get the job done first ,then worry about union stuff . I'm the type of guy who believes in being fair . f you want me to sit in the cab and do nothing , fine . For a while . If you want help , thats ok too . Being really anal isn't my thing ,and luckily , it's not our unions' thing either . I see a place for it though , and mega-jobs where the levels of danger is very high . It can be dangerous to , say , ask a packer operator to rig up a very heavy load to be picked up .

Rob

[Taylortractornu]

Rob I agree on the riggin part. When i run a crane i apoint the 2 best riggers on the job lol. Or ill do it myself. Here the union jobs just pay a dollar or 2 more than nonunion here. I already got a fair job that starts out high for this area and its insured.
I told the union man this morning I wasnt interested after all hes to one that chewed my tail at the hall for changing the hose. THe Nissan plant at Canton MS wanted to hire me but the lift truck driver told me he got an operator fired for moving his dumpster while he was on break for doing his job. I figured it best not to go there lol as i might have an incident.
I just hated sitting in the cab waiting forsomeone and also watcing folks struggle. I guess part of my brain wants me to be self sufficient because ive worked for small companies and own my own equipment. And another thing that got me was the having the same pay as the sorry operators SOrry i meant the back drag engineers lol.
I do agree that the unions have helped alot of folks but it has caused a few problems here.

[farmboy555]

This is a old post. but to me it sounds like the man was fired for not doing what he was told. I've been a Teamster for 34 yrs. I grew up on the farm, repairing equipment and what ever need's to be done at the time. I know it may not seem proper at the time. Just do what the man say's.

[mflah87]

My company is union and I won't put up with that " oh thats not my job crap" because that didn't get me to where I am today. I had a guy working for me who was pretty handy as a mechanic. The machine blew a hose so he got out changed it and that was it. Another operator who was a premadonna called the union hall on him and caused me all kind of grief. The union has its ups and downs, but all my guys now are good and cause no trouble. I pay them a couple of bucks over the rate and they appreciate it.

[Buckethead]

Im not sure if this is the righ part of the forums to place this under but I was given another chance to get into the Union here again. I was in one operators union for about a week and got fired be cause I sat in an excavator because the riggers and Iron workers wuld move a load of rebar in the way. I got the proper chokers and slings and picked one bundle up and the next 2 seconds a Union super visor was giving me a good a$$ chewing.
the next dy I ast 3 hours in one spot waiting for the same thing and the boss told me not to move it so I walkd the hoe over it. I didnt really give a darn because i hate sitting not doing any thing. The next thing that got me was the steel workers were inexperienced and i had gotten off to help them square some posts while they I was waiting for more sand. The third and final killer of my job was the next day I had a line blow out on the hoe ram cylinder and I went to my truck and got a 2 inch wrench and removed the hose while waiting for a mechanic. so my write up said I was being fired fore doing a riggers job, the steel workers job, and the mechanics job, and there was some mention of moving a truck crane 400 feet without a teamster. My question is Are all Union jobs like that? Dad has worked 48 years in dirt moving without a union. Dad and brother also taught me how to do several jobs and Ive also been paid to do more than one job when I was able to. I just couldn believe ho mad they were over the hose, they werent one bit mad at the Rebar I walked over. The truck crane had to be moved as the concrete was onsite and the nearest Teamster was about 45 minutes away. Im not really one the likes to be around red tape and all.

Something is fishy about that post. It reads like it was written by some lawyer or public relations person who has never set foot on an actual jobsite. On a union jobsite the operators NOT teamsters move the truck cranes around themselves, and always have. If the nearest teamster was 45 mins away how could the teamsters start trouble over it anyway? Most of the union rules complained about in this thread probably don't even exist, nearly all of them are unheard of around here, and this is a pretty strong union area.

[Dieselglory]

well i dont think his story is "fishy". Here in Chicago these are all too common stories. A prime example of this is the city of Chicago and their workers, a mechanic has to wait for an electrician to move forward with his duty. To me and this is my opinion only the union is good only for gauranteeing my 40 hrs in the slow season... Teamsters 731:usa

[Buckethead]

well i dont think his story is "fishy". Here in Chicago these are all too common stories. A prime example of this is the city of Chicago and their workers, a mechanic has to wait for an electrician to move forward with his duty. To me and this is my opinion only the union is good only for gauranteeing my 40 hrs in the slow season... Teamsters 731:usa

What mechanic? An equipment mechanic? Since when do they have an electrician fix a machine? Never heard of it. Are you talking about city employees? They patch potholes and things like that, what do they have to do with construction?

[Dieselglory]

well let me go from one specific exampl... OK one of the garbage truck mechs. left the company i work for to work for the city to work on theirs. When he was replacing an engine on a truck when he came to need to remove the PLC, a computer that was secured by the engine, he had to wait for an electrician to remove it. Well him being a very skilled mechanic, decided not to wait and removed it. He was then issued a "Letter" from the union for doing a job that was anothers. Ok its not verbatem but its what was said and done... Is that good enough to have to do with it... Ron:drinkup

[kamerad47]

One thing you have to remember is union workers are guaranted hours & pay nonunion are not !!!

[Steve Frazier]

Not necessarily true kamerad. I was a Teamster for over 20 years and there was no guarantee of hours. I sat by the phone every day waiting to be called to work. Sometimes that call never came.

The most senior guys worked every day, but even that wasn't guaranteed. There were x number of runs for the day requiring x number of drivers. If a driver was within that quantity x in seniority, he worked. If not, he didn't.

There was no guarantee of pay either. One construction company that was union was unable to make payroll and went bankrupt. A number of guys had to wait about 6 months for their pay from that company.

[Buckethead]

Dieselglory you're talking about government employees. I don't know anything about their unions. The original post was about construction, which has been my career for nearly 20 years now. Crane operators move the truck cranes around themselves, they don't wait for truck drivers, the very idea they would is ridiculous. In my experience with the crane rental companies, when big hydraulic truck cranes that must be disassembled, go out on daily rentals, not only does the crane operator drive the crane over the road usually a crane operator drives the truck with the counterweights, road plates, dunnage etc.

[Dieselglory]

ok ill conceide to the city employee thing, but another buddy works for an excavating company Local 331 and they do not allow operators to move trucks, and drivers are not allowed to remove equiptment of their trailers. Im done after this post, to each there own... ;)

[Steve Frazier]

Buckethead, what part of the Land of Opportunity are you from? I have a feeling that the strictness of unions varies between regions. I worked in Westchester County NY and you didn't dare do a job that wasn't in your job description regardless of which union you're in.

On one site job I was hauling on, some shot rock spilled off one of the trucks in the roadway we were using. I stopped to move it so I wouldn't damage a tire and was reamed out by one of the senior men, they called a laborer over to clean up the dunnage.

You didn't dare check the oil in your truck in the morning either, that was the oiler's job! On other jobs I had worked, the first thing you did before starting the truck was to check the oil. I did that my first day on a union job and caught holy hell.

[digger242j]

I think a lot depends on where you're located, and when in history you're talking about. The unions certainly don't have the power they once did.

My personal experience, from around 1976...

I got a job with a concrete contractor. He was supposed to be union, which I didn't know, or frankly, care. Some jobs you had to go by the rules very strictly, and others it didn't matter. My first surprise was that, since I wasn't a member of the finisher's union, I wasn't alllowed to use a rake, even to spread gravel. That's a finsher's tool. :nono Ok, I won't touch the rake... :beatsme

As far as I know, nobody was getting the union rate anyway.

He had a fairly big job, replacing cobblestone pavement, where a new gas main had been installed. My role was to drive the dump truck to the yard where the stones were stored, jump on a TLB and load them up, take them to the site and dump them on a pile, and go back for more. Once there were enough, he had five old Italian guys from the laborers hall installing them. (The only reason I mention that is because I was-a the only guy sitting there at lunchtime that couldn't understand a word of the conversation, because it was all spoken in Italian. :rolleyes: But I digress.)

At the site, I had to start the compressor and use a breaker to remove the half stones that were left along the edges, use the backhoe to dig out the temporary fill, and haul sand for bedding the new stones, as well as haul the stones from the stockpile.

One day, as I was running the breaker, with the hoe sitting idling nearby, a stranger walked up and asked me, "Who's running that machine?" I said, "I am." he said, "You got a book?" (If he'd asked me if I had a union card, I might've had a clue, but that was the first time I ever heard of a union "book".) Since I didn't know what he was talking about, obviously, I didn't have one. :eek:

My employer had to hire a union operator to run the hoe on the job, and pay him back pay for all the hours I'd done it. He had to hire a union compressor operator To push the button to start the compressor, and of course to shut the compressor off. Paid him back pay too. I got to keep laboring.

A week later, another stranger showed up, and all of a sudden, I learned that I had to join the laborer's union, or get laid off. The boss made me this offer--he'd pay the $150 initiation fee, and keep paying me the same wages I'd been earning.

Fortunately, I had another job already lined up, not in the construction industry, so I told him since I was only going to be around for another few weeks anyway, that I wouldn't feel right letting him pay $150 to get me in the union. He thanked me, and told me to go sign up for those weeks. I was so wet behind the ears, that I didn't even know what that meant, so I went 3 weeks without pay. :o

The lesson I took from that experience was this--it took two union guys, each probably earning three times the money, to do the work of one 20 year old kid, and they got paid for my work besides, and I ended up out of a job. What a crock... :mad:

That having been said, in the past few years, I've watched a large union contractor at work, and I couldn't tell you which were the operators and which were the laborers. Everybody did both, as far as I could tell. I guess in some ways things have changed.

(And if you want to see me jump up on the pro-union soapbox, ask me how I feel about the FAA and the Air Traffic Controllers' situation.)

[kamerad47]

All that i Know if you start a day you get 8 hours Prevail wage is a big thing now! a teamster on these jobs gets $36.00 plus bennis. senior guys always go 1st why do you see guys in their 60's still doing it its a good gig !

[Buckethead]

The truck crane *IS* in the operator's job description, not the teamsters! Always has been. It's a "truck crane" not a "truck".

[mflah87]

I have union operators and laborers but not truck drivers. The prevail wage for a truck driver is $37 an hour. But all my truck drivers have money taken out for 401K and insurance. A union operator in this area gets $36.11 an hour, a laborer gets $25 plus all the benefits of course.