Union Skilled Trades

Cdat

I’ve a question on union wages and rules. I know of a builder who has hung up his tool belt due to his business going bust in today’s marketplace. He has been hired by a company foreman to do work at a hospital expansion project in Detroit. This man has never in his life time been union. He has no skills to be, I don’t know the term used outside of factory work but here we would call him a pipe fitter. All he had to do was pay $100 to get a union job and now he makes some pretty decent wages.

This is considered a skilled trade (or so I thought) and I always @$$umed that local union pipe fitters had first crack at the job. I can’t believe that every pipe fitter in Southern Michigan is booked solid and there are no union workers in the area to hire.

The company he is working for is based out of Texas. I figured they were taking advantage of unskilled labor but getting paid union wages but his check comes from Texas and it is usually right around 37 bucks an hour.

Is this normal business as usual or what? Any union people help me out here? Tanks...er.....thanks.

concretemasonry

Michigan is a very unique state when it comes to unions, especially near Detroit. The unions are strong and make sure that the work is union or at union scale. Too bad the ecomony has been and is bad there. - Is this a connection why work and good people leave the state?

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Dick

Engineer, designer and consultant recently active domestically and internationally on construction and design in about 35 countries.

busaboysz

I'm from michigan now in vegas. he still has to prove he has the skill to do the job by references or taking a test. My friends a carpenter took a test passed cost him $300-400 for his card. But i took the apprentice way in detroit 4 boring years but in the end it's well worth it. union carpenter i

BattleRidge

so why should someone in the union be worth so much more then anyone else?

Celtic

It is highly out of the ordinary the way you have described it.
Perhaps he was hired as a Project Super/Manager ?

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Tom M

I dont know whats so unusual. I know several guys going into the union some in there 50's some roofers going into the carpenters union. What do they know about acoustic ceilings or metal stud framing. Its who ya know with senority that gets you in and on a project.

Celtic

The OP's ? is in regards to "skilled trades"...not nail benders and wood butchers

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Rick70

To buy a jouneymans painter card in IL is 740.00 not any one can just buy a card.

hbelectric

My background is 5 year union apprentice and 5 years union Journeyman.
We would get all types and you won't last long, if your not good at your job. Getting a card does not guarantee a job, it only guarantes a # on the books. Employers only have to pay you 2 hours show up time and they can send you back to the hall.

We sent back many of scab trained union travelers who landed cards by whatever means. Sometimes on these big union jobs, they have alot BS work that any moron can do. If they don't know you, your old or whatever reason, you will get these boring BS jobs. So it's possible to get a on a 2-3 year project and keep your job.

Mud Master

Here in Maryland, our carpenter's union is VERY weak. I had looked into it awhile back, and it wasn't worth it in the end, even with the expansion I was under at the time.

We do however have a very strong plumbing/steam fitters & mechanical union here, and I know many guys that either work in the union, or own a union company or COUNT company. I've never, at least here in MD, DC & NOVA heard of a guy "buying" his way in. It could be because we don't have HUGE unions in our area, or another reason, but this "buying" your card seems to be regional.

COUNT(Contractors and Unions Togeather) allows for open shop employees to reap the benefits of union tradesman, so maybe that is why we don't have those issues. COUNT, at least in this area, is strictly for mechanical contractors..so the carpenters, electrical, elevator, etc..cannot be a part of it.

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CharlesD

From my experience I'd doubt if the company he is working for is a Union Contractor since it's from Texas.
But, if he can get a union card and get a good assignment without any experience he must have some pull from someplace.
I joined the carpenters union late in life after being in busines for 30 years. It cost me about 700.00 plus I had to pass a journeyman entry level test. It was pretty simple for me to pass. I missed a couple crane signals and one math question.
In our local if you didn't produce you didn't stay on a job. Of course there were some who got the gravy jobs and some of us latecomers usually got the crappy ones. I got sent out on a river bridge. Didn't know a thing about building bridges but ended up working for the company for 4 years. I absolutely loved the work even when I was tied off 30 feet above the water. I took a winter job in my fifth year building forms for a large building and fell in a hole in the snow and it did me in. I had to take disability.
My union experience was good. So good that if I ever went back into business I would be a union contractor.
All these horror storied are usually fabricated out of fear for the unions.