The union babe that called Rush yesterday was IBEW. I wish he would have asked her why changing a light bulb in New York City (at Yankee Stadium at least) requires a union electrician or three. At a building in Manhattan, a guy I knew got tired of waiting for the building electrician to replace a florescent bulb over his cube, so he went to the closet, got one, and replaced it himself.
The electrician comes along later and says to him "What are you doing?! You're talking food out of my kids mouths!"
My friend replies "Your kids are too fat anyway."
He got written up for that remark, but it was worth it.
My experience was that I was responsible for the bulb matrix scoreboards, installed by the company I worked for in exchange for advertising revenue, during the renovation of Yankee Stadium completed in 1976. So we always wanted the thing to look as good as possible. The thing was a real light bulb eater, so usually 100 or more bulbs had to be replaced for each game. One fall afternoon in 1976, at 4PM I looked out at the scoreboard before a scheduled 8 PM playoff game, I saw our two sainted IBEW light bulb changers sitting in the bleachers shooting the breeze with the usual number of dead bulbs still to be changed. So I went out to the scoreboard and started changing the bulbs myself. What did I know? And I wasn't taking any bread out of any kid's mouth. The IBEW guys were still getting paid, but for BSing instead of changing light bulbs. The Union got very p!ssed. At 7 PM it still wasn't clear that THEY were going to ALLOW the game to be played. Working at the Stadium was a real dream. We weren't even allowed to run our own extension cords.
ML/NJ