I spent five years at the beginning of my career starting up power plants. Nothing I learned in engineering school prepared me for unions. In Arizona, I needed to make a simple five minute adjustment to a coal pulverized. I picked up a wrench to do it and almost got the entire job site shut down. SEVEN trades came out to “help” me - carpenter to move a plank, electrician, boilermaker, instrumentation, pipe fitter, laborer (to sweep the floor), and millwright. None of them moved quickly; there was zero sense of urgency. The five minute adjustment took an entire morning. I was a newly minted degreed mechanical engineer making half of what these guys were making. The “cost” to make that simple adjustment was 1,000 time higher than it would have been without those damned unions. The waste was absolutely mind boggling.
In Washington state, you could not get the unions off of a job at the end. They absolutely perfected featherbedding. In fact, the electricians were so proud of it they called themselves the “FLEAs” which stood for “Fat, Lazy Electrician.” They were PROUD of that!
My union “experiences” taught me everything I needed to know.
The lights were a safety requirement and had to be changed.
If a bulb burned out in the evening or during the weekend, an "emergency" service call was required......
It's a mystery why the the plant wasn't profitable and subsequently shuttered. But, no electrician jobs were "stolen" in the process by unauthorized personnel changing lightbulbs.
I ran into Washington state unions installing some machine tools into the Puget Sound Navy Yard. It was like that on a job I did in the old Republic Aviation plant on Long Island, too, (late ‘70s). Rumor had it at the time that the Air Force curtailed the A-10 program because it was so bad. Have hated unions ever since. The UAW was just icing on the cake.
I have a good union story. I was an electronic tech many moons ago. I was building a device that required specialized 3 phase electrical inputs and outputs. The design engineer told my boss to order 3 phase connectors from a local distributor. My boss decided to go against the design engineer wishes and buy the connectors from the local university stores. The local electrician union rep was in my shop before my boss got back to the shop with the connectors.