[ilbegone]

Your thought on Unions is approximate to mine. There are good unions, bad unions, upright unions, and crooked unions. It mostly depends on the leadership of the local.

A lot of people, including pundits, speak of unions as though they were same entity. That's as far from the truth as you can get.

I worked in one construction trade for a number of years and was suspicious of unions, perhaps very anti union. Then I went to work in another trade for a closed shop multi billion dollar corporation. I didn't like having to belong to a union until I realized what that company would do if there were no union.

Then I became radically pro union, which became a part of my divorce and a cause of general burn out.

I was with that company for 15 years before I quit, have worked out of hiring halls ever since, which I like a lot better. I figure there has to be give and take between employers and unions, if one side is all take and no give there is a problem, and I see that in various trades on both sides.

The small contractor, regardless of his predispositions, is right there and is - or should be - intimately involved in the work. The large corporations, on the other hand, are loaded with people who have no idea what the first and second lines do and they don't care. Their purpose it to make the stockholders money while fleecing the corporation for as much as they can, and the board of directors is the worst in this regard. They do it with every company they sit on, many of the boards are interlocking.

Your comment on old men was spot on, see it all the time of oldsters who just need to make it until retirement - but I haven't seen any company forced to hire an old man. There was an old man years ago who used to show up and shuffle around the hall every day wearing Carhartt bib overalls waiting for a job, but he was only hired once that I know of. I overheard the superintendent tell the General foreman over the phone to not spin the man but work him for a couple of days and then lay him off. I've known of a couple of old guys who were kept on for their knowledge when the chips were down, and some who where kept around because they were liked by a GF or superintendent (who might have been the old guy's apprentice many years before), but keeping around old men who can't run anymore is not a practice around here. I worked with a guy who was 70 some years old and still working, said he had retired twice and didn't much like it. He was in extraordinarily good shape for his age and made sure he kept busy because of the prejudice against age, he didn't want to provide any excuse to be run off. It used to be that the young guys would carry the old ones, but that doesn't happen much anymore.

The public service and teacher's unions in California are out of hand. Politically well connected, they have lost touch with reality. In Southern California the Carpenters union has sold out, it seems to exist only to collect dues and cater to illegals as I perceive the Masons, Laborers, and Teamsters have also done. The International Union of Operating Engineers seems to push a thug mentality on their members, but most dirt contractors across the nation treat their employees like shit. The various and sundry IBEW locals have their differing personalities, with inside, outside, and utility locals and hands having different mentalities. The Iron Workers are still nuts, but that's changing.

I don't like that my dues money is given to politicians I neither like nor trust, but I didn't bite on the one sided proposition that would ham string union political donations while letting corporations fund political campaigns.

There are good people and dirtbags everywhere, the perception of which sometimes boils down to local custom and variation. I lived and worked in Missouri for a while, I met some genuinely nice people but there are also some places you just don't go to unless you know someone, might not come back.

I worked around Denver for a while. My perception was of all the people who got fed up with California and moved to CO to escape it, but wound up turning Colorado into the thing they left. However, the ones who were loudest about not liking Californians moving to Colorado had moved up from Texas.

My original perception of Texans, formed by those who invaded SoCal in my trade years ago, was that they were all balls and no brains - screamers and yellers who thought they were being productive by throwing up dirt with running and breaking everything they touched. However, I have been to Texas since and found that the visitors to California were an extreme example of the Texas personality almost to aberration, I met a lot of good and generous people in Texas.

The kids in the trade from Texas now tend to address me as "Mr. (my first name)".

As far as genuine friendliness - there's a big difference between the warm handshake and the look straight to the eyes with "we have to have you over for dinner someday" and a quiet "be there Sunday at 1:30". The first isn't sincere.

And it seems to me that the Bible Belt is no less resistant to temptation or hypocrisy than anywhere else, it's whether or not you make it to church and fall in line on Sunday. Otherwise you don't belong to the community. It was fascinating to me that on so many intersections in Springfield, Missouri there was a used car dealership on one corner (pay by the week, but fifteen minutes late on payment means repossession and the car sold to another sucker) a Boatsman's Bank on another, a church on the third, a Brown Derby liquor store on the fourth, and a titty bar half way down the block. Combine that with the very busy whorehouse just out of city limits (I think the Sheriff had an interest in it) and you have something for everyone - just be on the pew Sunday because you can't be forgiven unless you sin.