Good luck on your search Brother Carpenter. you won't find what you're looking for working with a pipeliner outift in the southwest. They have very little work also due to Obama's EPA crushing the oil and energy industry in favor of solar panels and windmills. The back stabbing, undercutting, etc is off the charts with these pipeliner scabs. Good luck getting paid when one of these gyspys decides you're not worth it and packs up to leave you in the dust. I've been told that they'll work you 12 hours a day with no breaks and no lunch. God help you if you get hurt.....you'll be on your own for sure as they will pack up and be gone before you've been released from the hospital due to thier negligence. These guys have ZERO safety, rigging, OSHA, etc training. They WILL get you hurt or worse. A good way to tell is by looking at the pipeliners fingers and teeth. Any missing teeth or fingers is a huge warning sign to RUN AWAY. If they don't care about their own body, what makes you think they would care about yours?
I suggest you try some side jobs in carpentry until things improve. You won't find any help here as this forum is dominated by a handful of scab hicks with zero training in the welding trades. They just burn it in hot and deep and hope it doesn't fail. Many hire illegals as helpers as they can treat them like garbage and toss them in the trash when they get worn out from the verbal and sometimes physical abuse. The comments you've received point to this fact. They're used to dealing with Mexican helpers and Mexican helpers do not complain when they are beaten and whipped.
Best wishes to you.
thanks brother, i see what you mean. i hate scabs with a passion!
best wishes,
dave
Dave,
You'll find that many of these pipeliner scabs are union members only when it suits them. There are those who bid Federal prevailing wage jobs and find sneaky ways to pay welders $14.00 an hour with zero benefits.
My grandpa said that the fastest animal on earth was a Texan heading up to NY City with a paid up Union dues reciept. They'd run women and children off the roads, leave boot prints on your back, etc. Whatever it took to get to NY City for that high paying union welding gig. When the job ended, they'd slink on back to their filthy home while filing for unemployment up North and working under the table/scab back in the chaw spitting, toothless state of Texas. Texans really are animals. They even feed upon fellow Texans when it suits them.
Do what you have to do to feed your family. Nobody will ever hold that against you. Just don't lower yourself to work for one of these subhuman animals from a filthy place called Texas.
Best wishes brother
YOU .............. Mr. "Part NONE" have GOT to be the most useless troll-like and IGNORANT S.O.B. on this board. PARK the damn union high horse. It's legs are broke and back is tired from hauling the dead weight of your dumb a$$.
You listen to this troll and you will get the ration he gets.
There are a lot of people here that will help you and some of them are, well a penis with ears.
This guy is not respected and is bitter!
Do not fall into the trap that there is only only one way to succeed in welding. But even though you have experience, you are only as good as your last weld. As a older person you are fighting younger guys that have better eyes and eye hand coordination. May suck, but it is life.
There are a lot of opportunities out there, but unfortunately they are probably not in Chicago. You will need to travel where the jobs are. And right now they are in Nodak. Chances are they are not union. But they pay and they can feed a family.
And as a former union member and local officer, doing work to feed and put a roof over my families head is not being a scab. The world has changed. You can tilt against the windmills, but it will not change the fact, this is a different world.
I would never want to go back where I was dependent on the efforts of someone else or only spending time to advance. If you do, good, luck. But you are competing against those who do want someone else negotiating wages and benefits for them. I will take my own chances.
But your time you have spent as a union carpenter can open up a lot of doors. But do not sell yourself short being a wage slave. By changing your career, you can change your life.
Good luck
Wow, I don't typically engage in such things on here but I guess as I am non Union that I am a scab. Hick, perhaps, have all my teeth, except one that the dumb azz dentist screwed up the crown on and it leaked and now the tooth is gone. But it's in the back so nobody can see. I have all my fingers and toes though. I know several on here that are non-union that don't burn hot and deep and they know it won't fail. I have a safety program with my one man company, I have OSHA 30 training, I have a TWIC card, forklift operators license, First aid training and Drug testing...yes, on myself. A big job near here said they were gonna need 600 Ironworkers. An Ironworker buddy of mine(no longer in the Union) laughed when I told him about this, he said, and I quote, "Good luck finding 600 Ironworkers out of that local that will pass the drug test let alone the background check". I have insurance, workers comp, my own wps for AWS/API and will get more as needed for jobs. Wear hardhats and safety glasses on jobs as required by the contractors safety guidelines and if I had an employee it would be the same.
When you say "no breaks" are you saying they don't get as many breaks as Union guys? I had to address this and apologize to all the guys on here who have come to know me as one who does not do this normally, but to read what you are saying basically you are telling me that because I don't pay some schmuck so much coin a month to be part of some group with a fancy license plate then I am in fact a scab? That my ethical and honorable standards are somehow lower than your standards because I'm not Union? That my training, willingness to learn is somehow less than yours? I'd wager to guess that I may in fact be more desireable because I am willing to learn and unlike yourself, don't know everything. If this site is "dominated by a handful of scab hicks with zero training in the welding trades" why do you bother to come here to our lowly hovel? Aye, just getting the ol' Marine blood boiling.....scab. Guess it's a good thing I never got called by the union, might not have made it through a day without telling somebody to go play hide and go f___ themselves.
By stanantonio
Date 02-08-2011 05:02
Aawwmenn aswpertbs
I know where your coming from, I was a mechanic/tech for 18 years and got tired of dumping thousands in tools every year to work on somebody else p.o.s car for peanuts. Brother in law always told me that if he had to work at McDonalds to keep his house he would, don't matter that it's McDonalds, $7.25/hour, just a job until something better comes along. If a guys gonna lose his house because he's been sitting around soaking up unemployment checks watching soap opera's or at the bars for 2 years than it's their own fault and no sympathy here. I got laid off 3.5 years ago, have not collected one unemployment check after 18 years of steady "employee" work. $8-10 per hour to keep your house until something better comes along or you get some connections out there and start your own carpenter business, Union be damned, you gotta do what you have to do to keep your roof over your head, food in your families bellies. Start your own crew, hire some legal "texacans", bid jobs, run your own biz doing what you know best. Just my thoughts on the issue, but I've worked several jobs at one time, toy stores at night building bikes, fixing cars during the day and turning wrenches in the driveway in my home on weekends just to keep the house, food on our plates. Lived without a microwave for almost two years and a clothes dryer for almost as long, couldn't afford to replace them and we could live without them.
I guess the question is this, is it the Union that can't find the work or is there no work out there for Union/non-union alike? If indy's are going at it like flies to a turd then I'd turn my book in with the blink of an eye....Sorry Union guys, I know I'll catch heck on here for these statements but if it comes down to family or Union....they loose. After 25 years in the biz your phone is sure to have lot's of phone numbers in it. I'd be starting up "Chitown Builders" and gettin' to shaking the bushes. When your not doing that start doing some handy craft work in the garage building quality cabinets or shelving something they won't find at the home store. To be working with wood for 25 years you must have some mad skills that I could only dream about, I suck at woodwork.
If your serious about the welding though start checking at schools, don't know what the 20 years of welding means that you say you have but I've seen guys that have welded all their life....on the farm and here to tell ya, ewwww, not saying you can't but I've met lots of folks who are "welders" and then they slip up and tell me about running 6018's all the time or 7011's and you stop and think to yourself....hmmmm. Lots of talking, researching more and more and then it's not a walk in the park to slip a toe in the door. I've been trying to poke that toe in for years without much luck. When you talk about a welders helper that guy has to be a mind reader. You have to anticipate what the welder is gonna want next, chipping hammer, grinder, grind root pass. You might find something around Chicago in a shop as a shop helper or something like that but heck, you might only be making $10 an hour doing that until you move up the ranks etc. I think you mentioned doing a 3G? That's a start and may or may not be a foot in the door. Don't know if my mindless babblings have helped out or not but good luck with whatever you get into.
Shawn
