Hey all,

Just an apprentice here who’s never worked through times as slow as this. With nearly 180 apprentices sitting out, I was wondering if any of the older guys in here/guys who’ve worked through slow ass periods have any idea when things might pick up.

I’m stuck in a BAS company and as great as the work is, it’s dirty and almost unsafe with the amount of asbestos I deal with on a daily basis. I’m also not trying to specialize in BAS and would love to learn more but my company doesn’t have those opportunities for me right now.

My project manager is also a douche canoe and I really wanna jump ship but obviously times are slow and if I were to ask for a layoff I’d be out of work for months.

I can’t afford that layoff right now as I have rent and all that and I wanna have an idea of how much longer I’d have to ride it out over here. I’m only a second term apprentice so I don’t think my EI would be maxed out.

I've been out of work for 3 months. I've moved 6 spots on book 1 since feb 2. On a list of 260 guys. Having to look at work in 932, 48, or 112. First long term layoff in my 7 year career. I'm stressed the fuck out. I dont know how you guys do this. I have no problem with the work. But sitting this long is driving me batshit crazy.

My wife and I are genuinely thinking of moving to Fort Worth, TX. I was wondering if anyone has any info on what a ground man makes out there and which local to go to. I saw that there was Local 220 and Local 20.

What are the best areas in Colorado for an Inside Wireman? I’m looking into other areas we may move to and want to get a better idea of the work available and conditions. Thanks.

For those part of local 48, what have been some of your commute times? Thanks🤙

I’m 24F looking to get into a trade for the first time. I’m curious to know - what were you doing before and what convinced you? How long did you think about it?

Long story short, I want to know if you can loophole your HRA/FSA card to acquire close-to but not-quite medical necessities? I know you can buy medicine, and use it for co-pays and dental. But can you use it for things like protective equipment for say, camping, sports equipment, helmets, gloves, etc? Does anyone have a list of all the things that are and aren't eligible? Thanks in advance.

I took a call starting Monday, but there's a new call for $300 a week more and 5 hours a week less. I'd like to call the first contractor and leave a voicemail explaining my choice and apologize for not following through, then call the hall and ask for the better call. What's the worst that could happen? It's Local 48.

Has anyone heard anything official on contract negotiations? Not sure why it’s ok for our leadership to keep us outta the loop. I think it’s kinda shady they don’t tell us what they’re fighting to get, makes me think they’re giving NECA what they want.

Just curious how many locals have a wage scale for lead journeyman. I guess it would between journeyman and foreman. If your local does, what are your thoughts about it?

Any brothers or sisters on here from local 46 got any updates on how it's going? I was wanting to travel over there from California. Low Volt Sound JW btw.

I had no other choice but to do a 90 with an offset (not the gooseneck method). At first I ran a 90 to the box and ran the pipe on the edge but JW wanted it down the center. LB couldve been used but I dont think contractor wanted an LB used for this.

Training center haven’t accepted applications since 2020 I believe. Is there no work?

So if I'm feeding a 15 amp circuit that's 150 feet away I'll get a 7.4% voltage drop with 12 gauge wire. My question is... In residential applications do y'all ever run 10 gauge or 8 gauge to the first device box in the circuit as a feeder and then splice back down to 14 gauge so there won't be a crazy voltage drop in the home run

Anyone else in the IBEW as anything but an electrician? I've been employed in a factory for almost 19 years now as a member but we're not "skilled". We have no book, no hall nothing like that. We pay our union dues and see our union rep maybe once a year and at contract time. Just wondering how common this is and if there's anyone else in here similar to me?

At what size do you think your con should provide for larger conduit? I personally only carry 10 inch Knipex and smaller. Can do 1 1/4. I think anything over, your contractor should provide. Agree? Disagree?

Just a little background: I’m a 3rd year apprentice that joined the union about 6 months ago. Working non union for close to 4 years prior has given me an amazing appreciation for everything the union stands for. I’m very proud of my decision and I would say I agree with most of what the IBEW stands for.

Within my time in the union I’ve met some straight up rats and also some very dedicated brothers. Most recently I’ve been paired with an extremely opinionated JW. His political views are interesting to say the least but his opinion on the union is what has been really bothering me. He makes a lot of comments about how we can’t keep asking for more money in our contracts or companies will start hiring non union, that people who call in sick are selfish and ruin things for everyone else, and a bunch other comments that just seem kind of wormy. Most of it I ignore and just let him talk his shit. However, recently it’s gotten to where I can feel I won’t be able to keep my opinions to myself when he says shit like this because of a couple incidents that really irked me.

Since we’ve been paired he’s been using his own wrenches, ratchets, and socket sets to do a lot work. Those tools are not on our tool list but everyone at the plant we work at besides myself uses them so I didn’t let it bother me too much. That was until he started telling me I needed to get all those tools so I could work faster. Every time I’d pull out my channel locks he’d scoff and say “I told you, you need to get wrenches so we aren’t wasting time on these bid jobs.” Or something along those lines. The other day I got fed up with him telling me I needed these tools and said, “when those get on the tool list I’ll start bringing them.” Which led to him responding with, “We’ve had people come out here before and say they are only following what’s on the tool list. When we finish the job they are on we lay them off and don’t bring them back. There’s a way of doing things out here that just makes sense and we don’t need people who are too stubborn to make their own jobs easier.” I bit my tongue my tongue and just went back to work. The next day we were discussing how in the months of June-August our plant is moving to 5-10s. I told the JW that it didn’t bother me but I wouldn’t be working 50 hours a week every week because I have plans this summer. He told me that it’s required and that is how I will get in trouble. I told him my contract states anything after 40 isn’t required and I cannot be punished. He responded by telling me that apprentices have to work whatever hours they are told. That in the past they have had apprentices working 7-12s and if that’s the schedule we have to work it there is no option. He then ended by saying he had never heard an apprentice say that they wouldn’t work the required hours. This irked me even more because twice now I have felt like I’ve been more or less threatened by this JW if I don’t conform to his ideology of the union.

Any advice on ignoring it or what to do? This guy has been at this plant for a few years and seems to be a solid piece to their puzzle. I have already ruffled some feathers in the first department I worked in by calling out a shitting foreman. I want to keep my head low but I’m not sure what to do with these low key threats he’s made.

TLDR: wormy jw says lots of wormy shit and has hinted that if I don’t follow his ideologies then I won’t last. Any advice on what I can do to keep peace in the future?

Edit: only wrench on our tool list a 10” crescent wrench

Employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers union Friday in a historic first test of the UAW’s renewed effort to organize nonunion factories.

The union wound up getting 2,628 votes, or 73% of the ballots cast, compared with only 985 who voted no in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

Both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, the NLRB said. If there are none, VW and the union must “begin bargaining in good faith.”

Twice in recent years, workers at the Chattanooga plant have rejected union membership in plantwide votes. Most recently, they handed the UAW a narrow defeat in 2019 as federal prosecutors were breaking up a bribery-and-embezzlement scandal at the union.

But this time, they voted convincingly for the UAW, which is operating under new leadership directly elected by members for the first time and basking in a successful confrontation with Detroit’s major automakers.

The union’s pugnacious new president, Shawn Fain, was elected on a platform of cleaning up after the scandal and turning more confrontational with automakers. An emboldened Fain, backed by President Joe Biden, led the union in a series of strikes last fall against Detroit’s automakers that resulted in lucrative new contracts.

The new contracts raised union wages by a substantial one-third, arming Fain and his organizers with enticing new offers to present to workers at Volkswagen and other companies.

Next up for a union vote are workers at Mercedes factories near Tuscalossa, Alabama, who will vote on UAW representation in May.

Michael Ream, who has worked assembling vehicles at the Chattanooga plant since 2019, said he voted for the union because people who build cars need to have a voice.

“We need to be treated fairly and not dictated to every second of our day,” he said.

Ream said he was inspired by the contracts that the UAW won with Detroit automakers after going on strike last year. He was among dozens of workers, some wearing red shirts that said “Future UAW Member,” who gathered Friday night at an electrical workers union hall near the VW factory.

Volkswagen thanked workers for voting and said 83.5% of the 4,300 production workers cast ballots in the election. The company said it was it is neutral on the issue of whether the plant should be unionized.

Six Southern governors, including Tennessee’s Bill Lee, warned the workers in a joint statement this week that joining the UAW could cost them their jobs and threaten the region’s economic progress.

But the overwhelming win is a warning to nonunion manufacturers, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies the union.

“This is going to send a powerful message to all of those companies that the UAW is knocking at the door, and if they want to remain nonunion, they’ve got to step up their game,” Masters said.

He expects other automakers to become more aggressive at the plants, and that anti-union politicians will step up their efforts to fight the union.

Shortly after the Detroit contracts were ratified, Volkswagen and other nonunion companies handed their workers big pay raises. Fain characterized those wage increases as the “UAW bump” and asserted that they were intended to keep the union out of the plants.

Last fall, Volkswagen raised production worker pay by 11%, lifting top base wages to $32.40 per hour, or just over $67,000 per year. The average production worker makes about $60,000 a year, excluding benefits and an attendance bonus. VW said its pay exceeds the median household income for the Chattanooga area, which was $54,480 last May, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

But under the UAW contracts, top production workers at GM, for instance, now earn $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year excluding benefits and profit sharing, which ranged from $10,400 at Ford to $13,860 at Stellantis this year. By the end of the contract in 2028, top-scale GM workers would make over $89,000.

Isaac Meadows, an assembly line worker in Chattanooga who helped lead the union organizing drive at the 3.8 million-square-foot (353,353-square-meter) plant, which manufactures Atlas SUVs and the ID.4 electric vehicles, said he was confident the union would win.

“The excitement is really high right now. We’ve put a lot of work into it, a lot of face-to-face conversations with co-workers from our volunteer committee.”

VW asserts that its factories are safer than the industry average, based on data reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And the company contends that it considers workers’ preferences in scheduling. It noted that it recently agreed to change the day that third-shift workers start their week so that they have Fridays and Saturdays off.

But Meadows, whose job involves preparing vehicles for the assembly line after the auto bodies are painted, said the company adds overtime or sends workers home early whenever it wants.

“People are just kind of fed up with it,” he said.

VW, he argued, doesn’t report all injuries to the government, instead often blaming pre-existing conditions that a worker might have. The union has filed complaints of unfair labor practices, including allegations that the company barred workers from discussing unions during work time and restricted the distribution of union materials.

Volkswagen disputed the union’s allegations and said it properly reports injuries and supports the workers’ right to vote on union representation.

The VW plant will be the first the UAW has represented at a foreign-owned automaking plant in the South. It would not, however, be the first union auto assembly plant in the South. The UAW represents workers at two Ford assembly plants in Kentucky and two GM factories in Tennessee and Texas, as well as some heavy-truck manufacturing plants.

Also, more than three decades ago, the UAW was at a Volkswagen factory in New Stanton, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. VW closed the plant that made small cars in the late 1980s.

I dunno. I'm on the road, nomadic for months. And, I realized that I have two channies -(spelling uncertain; I've only spoken this name for the previous 25 years) a 430, and my grandfathers channy (forgive the spelling - I'm lost) that is a bit small and that's becoming sort of an issue. I hop onto Amazon, as is my way, earlier this week. And, for the first time in my career, I wondered if it would be better to have 432 channies. The marketing for 432 reads, "V-JAWS for more points of contact on round stock and tubing" and we (the collective "we") don't use channies for nuts and bolts anymore. We just use them on conduit and conduit parts. Are you guys and gals, and everyone else just being you, are you using 430s or 432s? Straight jaw or V-jaw? I'm not going to lie, I'm convinced the V-jaw is more appropriate for my work, so I already purchased them.
And, don't try to sell me on 440s or 442s. I'm never going to carry something that large. Never.

I'm a convicted felon drug and weapon case. I've done 10 years fed and state. Currently on 3 years supervision by the feds looking for any ibew that are actively hiring. I'm wiling to relocate just drop those locals so I can call and set up a meeting. I give up up some money for a successful hire.

Hi!

This is a long shot that anyone would know this, but my sparky best friend is asking for a sister and they don’t Reddit.

They’re wondering how many hours you need to have worked in Massachusetts to apply for unejoyment there.

They have been working in other states for the most of the year.

TIA!

Wondering if Low V is a good career choice and has the same level of benefits in healthcare and other things. I can only glean the raw wage from the website so I can’t tell if Low Vs have similar wages but no Bennie’s or what

Currently non-union in the process of trying to join 134. This is the only bathroom on site 😂

Just wanted to get a sense if I were ever in a position to have to lay off people if this is frowned upon or something like that.

Lets just assume that scenario is the crew - all things being equal are all great workers and the impact to the job would not change depending on who stays but I have to downsize.

Would the whole pulling straws or whatever 'random' way to lay someone off considered in bad taste? Unprofessional? anything to that effect? The main thing would be to just set a tone that the foreman/gf or whoever is not playing favorites.

Edit: Im an apprentice guys i'm just trying to understand what you guys would consider to be 'fair' or appropriate im not in a position to do any of this.

I’m an apprentice for 640 in phoenix. My local is going through contract negotiations this year and I’m curious what other nearby locals have written in their contract that might differ from ours? Is it possible to get a copy of the contracts if I call locals in nearby states?

My local's tool list requires tap wrenches but doesn't specify sizes like the wrenches and sockets. I've never been required to carry taps before but i did carry the klein tap screw driver device screws for old metal boxes. I was wondering if anyone had a decent set they liked preferably in a protective case, thanks.