Unions have always been, and always will be, a complicated topic to discuss. I will be the first one to say, we do complain about our union and some of its practices just about every day. But, who doesn't complain about their jobs? The one thing I realized these past couple of years is that all unions are not the same. The IBEW has hundreds of union halls all over the place, and none of them operate the same way. I believe there are good unions and not-so-good unions. Here in Michigan, there is astrong belief in unions, mostly I believe, from the automotive industry here in Detroit. One of our biggest complaint now, is health care costs. The union has a general health and welfare fund. We pay into it, and our medical expenses get paid from that fund. So it is a private fund. There is way too many issues do debate over how well this system works, but it is what we have. I believe the union in our area is a good thing, so I will list a few pros... I believe we are in the top 5 in the country for pay scale. A journeyman makes around $21 somethin an hour, I think.(we just got a small raise this year, not sure exactly how much) I believe we are paying over $5 an hour to out health fund. Add in what the companies pay into our retirement and we are just a little shy of $30 an hour. We are not allowed to work in "inclimate weather", which means rain and wet snow. We do get a 3 hours paid float time for inclimate weather. If it rains steady all morning, we get to go home at 10:30 and get paid till then. If it starts raining at 1:00 in the afternoon, we get paid till 4. If it starts raining at 12:00, we have to be in by 3. and so on. If we have to work in the rain ( for a storm job where there is an outage for example) we get paid time and a half. Any hours worked past 4:00 is time and a half, as is saturdays. Sundays and holidays are double time. We have about 8 paid holidays thru the year. MLK day today is one of them. We get 2 weeks paid vacation per year. And a bunch of unpaid sick, personal days. The only down side to this job is, imo, you are working for the utility company. When thier budget gets tight, and profits get jeopardized, the tree trimmers seem to be the first ones to get laid off. There is a ton of politics involved as to the security of our jobs. Well my pecking fingers are tired now, lol. If there are any more questions about unions, I will try my best to answer them.
