Harry lol,
Hey I understand your frustration but there is only one way to defend against contractors picking who they want by calling for welders. Everyone has the opportunity and the right to become a certified welder. Our training center is open 5 days a week both days and nights for any member looking to polish up their skills. If you want to use it all you have to do is contact Paul and set up a time to stop in and practice. We have an instructor there for anyone needing help. The contracts allow for calls for welders and we closely follow the welder to machine ratio to make sure that they are not taking advantage of the contract, if some of the contractors such as URS at Monroe had a choice they wouldn’t hire any mechanics at all. We sit in meetings all the time with the contractors and hear them say tube welders make the best mechanics and they honestly feel that way. The contractors feel that anyone willing to take the extra time and effort to learn a skill such as tube welding especially stainless is going to be an asset to their jobsite and will be a more well rounded productive Boilermaker. Welding is a tool of our trade, and in order to graduate you have to have some welding papers and where you go from there is up to you. Currently our local is starting to run low on stainless welders because no one is coming in to practice welding it. We currently have 70 stainless welders and only around 40 of them are stainless tube. The majority of them are steady with the same contractor all the time. We have a large job coming up in the near future which will be primarily stainless welders with very few guys to man it. We need mechanics and that is a fact, but another fact is welders are what the contractors always call for first to make sure that they get theirs before we run out of them, because they know we are running low on them especially during busy outage times. We currently only have 76 tube welders available and work is very slow so you can imagine how bad it is when Monroe starts calling for tube welders for the Boiler outage and header replacement.

As for calls for high rigger calls everyone has the choice to take the job. I call everyone on the list in order to offer them the job. You have the choice to accept it or turn it down without penalty just like any other job. If you do choose to accept the job and they ask you to work high rigging you were warned in advance that it is a possibility that is why I am required to pass the word along as a courtesy, if you choose to refuse to high rig they probably won’t keep you. Not everyone is comfortable with high rigging and they understand that but they have a job to do and have to make sure that they have the right guys for it.

If you have any questions or concerns about anything my office door is always open. I have no problem sitting down and talking to anyone about any of their concerns or issues. Feel free to stop in anytime and visit. I am very easy to deal with and always open to suggestions so let me know what is on your mind. Thanks for your time and have a great day.