A Day in the Life of a Union Electrician (as told by Dave Burris)
Editors note: I put this together as a draft back when Dave was looking like he was going to launch an all out jihad against organized labor under the ruse of running for Governor.
11: 55 am A union electrician leaves his house when ever he feels like rolling out of his feather down bed.
1:35pm He drives down to the union hall and hangs around with his buddies drinking sparking water with a twist of lemon.
3:15pm He finds out that he there is no work for that day so he decides to go fishing.
8:30pm He returns to his estate and rests secure int he knowledge that tomorrow will be as sweet as today.
You forgot to list the time at which he pays his union dues so his leaders can help undermine American values.
You should see the life of a union welder, talk about decadent.
OK, I’m the dumb guy in the room. I don’t get how the photos relate to the message.
Is it to show how the well-heeled don’t need the kind of support that union workers do?
Dana,
I think Jason is using the images to illustrate the vision that most Republicans have of the life- style of Union workers. It’s alot like the welfare-queen dilusion, totally false, but it feeds their rage. They like to believe this stuff. It keeps them fired up to keep hurling lies and ***t at the rest of us.
“It’s alot like the welfare-queen dilusion”
Anytime people say welfare-queen, all I can think of is the MTV show where ODB from Wu-Tang Clan went to pick up his welfare check in a limo with a camera crew.
Do you guys really want to do this all over again here?
The question has nothing to do with the lifestyle of union members. The question is twofold:
1) Do we want to, as a state, spend tens of millions of dollars artificially inflating wages of construction workers on state jobs instead of building more schools and roads or giving a raise to state employees?
2) Do we want to continue to pay less-skilled, less-talented non-union workers on state jobs the same rate as highly-skilled, highly-talented union workers? Essentially more money for a lesser product?
Actually, Dave, the issue is FAR more than that for you since you have publicly stated on your blog that as far as you are concerned unions no longer serve a useful purpose.
If that isn’t code for the legal abolition of unions, I don’t know what is.
Indeed, this entire jihad is to create another industry with “jobs that Americans won’t do”.
And this:
2) Do we want to continue to pay less-skilled, less-talented non-union workers on state jobs the same rate as highly-skilled, highly-talented union workers? Essentially more money for a lesser product?
is just plain ignorant.
Once you get above the Laborer categories, the non-union workers have to have the same training, the same certifications, the same licenses to do the specialty stuff that the union workers do. Nobody gets picked right off of the street to operate a crane. And for certain types of jobs, laborers need some specific training, certifications and skills too.
Just because it doesn’t need a college degree does not mean that the work is not highly specialized and highly skilled.
This, in no way gets built with unskilled labor.
All I heard about during the prevailing wage debate was this project and that project that the unions had to go in and re-do because the non-union guys screwed it up so bad. So why are we paying those guys so much?
“Just because it doesn’t need a college degree does not mean that the work is not highly specialized and highly skilled.”
But does it need to be highly subsidized, too?
Here is a little snippet into the American Conservative mind:
““It’s alot like the welfare-queen delusion”
Anytime people say welfare-queen, all I can think of is the MTV show where ODB from Wu-Tang Clan went to pick up his welfare check in a limo with a camera crew.
Do you guys really want to do this all over again here?
Because if it happened once (and that’s debatable), it happens every single time. What we have here is a classic case of taking an anomaly or the ‘extreme’ and calling it the norm.
Why do they do this, you may ask? Well the only reason I can come up with is that since the Right almost always runs on the “what is wrong with gov’t” meme, and if they do not have pertinent ‘wrongs’ to run on, THEY’LL JUST MAKE SHIT UP!
This mindset is very similar to an impulsive, criminal one – in regard to reacting with the ID or Superego. There is no in-between (ego=reason), only action and reaction.
Also, the same faux-validation of the extreme is readily apparent in the Right’s reliance on THAT ONE SCIENTIST who thinks Global Warming is a hoax or Fossil Fuels are not a contributing factor….. or the ONE POLICY WONK who thinks water boarding (brought to you by the Inquisition!) is not torture….
…I’m sensing a pattern here…..
By these examples would it be fair to think that all republican males are sexual deviants with a wide stance, who come onto congressional pages, who preach the bible then indulge in a sweaty massage administered by a man, and who regret – but don’t count – their “youthful indiscretions”?
Is this a pattern?
You know what’s scary? I could go on, but I have to pick up my kids.
Things to throw out because ODB got welfare:
* Baby
* Bathwater
* Soaps
* Sink
* Towels
* All Fixtures
* Tile Walls and floors
* Any remaining bathroom dry wall
* Plumbing
* Wiring
me thinks the RightWankers doth protest too much……or sumtin’ like that….
I’m sure ConAgra/Citibank/Dole (bananas, not Bob) received much more gov’t welfare than all the ODBs combined….
Nope, no hypocisy here….
But does it need to be highly subsidized, too?
No one has demonstrated to me that it is highly subsidized. On my projects that are in about the same geographic area, what I pay in wage rates for union and non-union labor (meaning all of the categories) is not so different. If it is non-union, I don’t pay any wage burden (altho if the job is long enough some employees can opt in). But the construction markets have been pretty strong mostly all of the US for quite some time. There have been markets that we have worked in where laborers get to laugh at the offer of the base prevailing wage. Maybe Delaware is a more sluggish construction market, but if you compare just wages, the prevailing wage is not so far off of the mark in place where I’ve been working.
I had a guy on the radio complain that if we took prevailing wage again, he’d have to go back to making $22 an hour.
So Al asked him what he made on the prevailing wage job.
His answer?? $50 an hour.
And he’s not alone. Plus, there is no classification for “helper” in PW. So any warm body on a building construction job makes at least the $31 laborers wage.
Did either of you think to ask what he made per year and what his benefits were?
“Did either of you think to ask what he made per year and what his benefits were?”
Of course not. That would be too much to the point.
Skies are clear in New Castle County… Go look at the moon right now.
anon,
Oh my gosh. That was awesome. Thanks for the tip.
(and my wife says the blog is a waste of time. )
And ask him if he works 2080 hours per year. Also ask him if he works at the $50/hour labor category all year or if he actually does multiple categories depending upon the job.
And any construction site that actually has “any warm body” not exactly busting ass is:
1) Killing possible profit margin on a FFP job or
2) Wasting their client’s funds on a CP job.
And from my own perspective — the quickest way for the State or the Feds to get the biggest bang for their construction dollar is to employ way better Project Managers and Engineers.
Thanks for bringing up the point about how the entire right wing believes the one scientist who doesn’t believe in Global Warming. The wingnuts suffer from what I call “tenth dentist syndrome”. You know the tenth dentist – when 9 out of 10 dentists recommend that you brush your teeth every day, the tenth dentist says, “eh, I’m sure you got better things to do.”