I haven’t been around the oil business for awhile. Back then, you had to go through the union to get hired. If you took a look at the Union rolls, it was just several families. The union became a clan. It worked to keep non-family members out.
In many years of being in and observing workplace unions I have concluded that so called unions of any ilk are not much more than money makers for a few connected ‘gangsters’. I am constantly reminded of when I was on a ship crossing the Pacific to Leyte in WWII. The seamen supposedly all US hyped never ceased trying to get to be the money handlers in our shipboard crap shoots. The seamen thought they had us by the testicles while being transported. So/to much for this stuff that we are all US persons from that group of ‘union’ persons.