[quote]angry chicken wrote:
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
You’re in MD right? Local 26 or Local 24 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers would take you in a minute as an Apprentice. It’s a five year program, but you work the whole time (start off at 50% of scale and get a 10% bump in pay every year).
Right now the scale is $39.05 an hour for a Journeyman Electrician (Plus Annuity, Pension and Full benefits). With your education you’ll be at the top of your class and probably fall right into a foreman/service truck gig which would give you another 3 - 5 bucks an hour plus a truck and a gas card. Paid vacation and performance bonuses if you sell yourself right. It’s good work.
I was an electrician for ten years (I only left because I topped out) and if the mortgage industry gets any more fucked up than it already is, I’d go back in a minute.
my .02 [/quote]
We only hire non-union electricians. 8O[/quote]
I’m sure there’s plenty of great non-union electricians. But the 5 year apprenticeship that you get with the union is FAR better than any non-union avenue available (most are 2 year programs at a community college or at a large company). To get a journeyman’s license for any local jurisdiction, all you need is to meet a ridiculously low man hour requirement and pass a test I could have aced as a second year apprentice. That doesn’t mean that ALL non union electricians are unqualified, but you sure don’t HAVE to be very qualified to get a journeyman’s license… Just sayin’! LOL
I remember one time six or seven years ago when we were working on a new building in down town DC in the winter, and some assholes in the next building put up a sign that read, “It’s 72 degrees up here”. So we made our own sign that read, “It’s $33.65 / hr. down here”. They took their fucking sign down…
An AVERAGE white collar job will pay far less than a job in a trade (Electrician, Plumber, Steam Fitter, Elevator, Duct work, Sprinkler Fitter, HVAC or BAS tech). I know in Local 26, on TOP of the scale was the annuity - for every hour I worked $4.00 was placed in an account that I had access to invest within Fidelity Financial (and you could even take money out to buy a house), on top of that was the pension ($62.00 a month for every year of service from the Local and another ~$10.00/mo from the International for year of service) PLUS full insurance coverage through Alliance for you and all your dependents which is like $950 a month on COBRA. It was like a $60.00 an hour plus package… That’s not so fucking bad.
The down side is that once you reach Foreman and get your five dollars over scale, the truck, the vacation, the bonuses etc… there is literally NOTHING you can do to go beyond that (besides stealing copper, I know some guys who make an extra 30K a year at the scrap yard by ordering 15’ extra on all of their wire pulls and the copper really adds up).
I left because I saw an opportunity. I took it and it worked out (it was 2004 and the real estate market was unregulated and exploding). There wont be another bubble like that for some time. There is NO SHAME in working a trade. It’s good stable work and it’s ~80K a year plus the extras. That’s not bad.
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AC my only issue with this situation is he has a degree that he has not utilized or excercised all his possible options. Closing doors on potential from one experience is not the way to go through life. Again just to make clear I am not down grading blue collar work, what I am saying is why waste something you have already achieved.
I had a hard day at work yesterday and I was enjoying a margarita when I came upon this thread.