An Example FAQ< Licensed Electricians Please!

RobertWilber

yeah
can you imagine if NASA had been subject to OSHA ....

they would have prob'ly had to fill those big tanks with inert matter so they didn't 'splode and bolt them things to the ground so's they didn't fall over ...

Sparky Joe

What's wrong with doing that? Hey, perhaps now I have an excuse

K2

K2

I 've seen the "union guys" taking naps on the rows of pipe up in the bar joists. Or maybe that was some of the other guys.

mdshunk

Well... c'mon. That might be a little exaggeration.

I do know that there are unwritten productivity rules on some jobs. After you run so many feet of pipe in a day, or hang so many boxes, you need to "disappear" for the rest of the day. I never really had the temperament for those sorts of jobs. I'm too high-strung to not work steadily all day.

Sparky Joe

8 for 8 of course is the standpoint, but you'll always hear "don't work yourself out of a job" on the jobsite.

I have heard of such jobs that MD mentions, usually industrial, but sometimes huge commercial work. Where the customer pays for 'x' amount of maintenance work to be done in a year, but yet they didn't need any, so what do you do; walk around all day and burn up the hours, and nobody likes a work day like that. In fact because of this point.....

Near us (and also in other places) we have Micron, which is a huge facility with huge amounts of money. It didn't happen here but somewhere else where the guys were doing the 'shuffle' (walk around with a piece of pipe on your shoulder all day). Well Micron noticed it and said they never want the IBEW in their buildings again. So recently they had a huge addition near here(200 electricians for a year), which the internatrional office had to go to them personally and basically beg for the work. Everyone there had to be ISO #whatever quality certified (I think) in order to get the contract. Now, half way through there are tons of electricians (from all over the country) making tons of overtime, and paying tons of money into our local district health and welfare funds. Very good decision on the part of the IBEW. As far as the shuffle, I'm sure there is plenty of that going on, I just hope the stews are keeping it unseen.

K2

I was a teamster, (ups) in my college days but have never been a member of a trade union. I my 3 or 4 years of running/GC ing commercial construction work I ran both union and non union subs from most of the trades.

All other things being equal, if i had a choice between a union sub and a non union sub i would take the union guys any day.

I know on some of the really big job things can seem so disorganized, with things having to be redone 3 or 4 times, guys can feel like doing nothing will save everyone a bunch of money.

We had an Intel job here where the guys were bored to death working 12 to 14 hrs/day, knocking down 3 or 4k a week. I had never heard of
"double double" but i actually saw it on a plumbers check.