what is wrong with the union to be honest look i was an open shot plumber for 17 years then i joined the union and i was in the union for 23 years and yes i said was in the union see i'm not in the union anymore meaning my company is not a union plumbing company and i want to talk about some things what is wrong with the union but also if you'll hang around to the end i'm going to tell you what's good about the union because there are things there too so first of all
there's a lot of people that when they get into the union they complain about union dues and it's not just union dues it's union dues union fees there's things that are taken out of your check for different things training education different funds here different funds there well i gotta tell you as a union member i can see how that'll get you you look at your check all these deductions come out but here's the thing those fees go for good things think about it you're paying to help educate the apprentices coming through the training center you're
paying to keep the training center open you're even allowed if things are set up right where you can go down there as a journeyman and train and learn yourself but don't get me wrong a lot of people are like hey that's my money i earned it i don't want to have to give it back to the union it's my money and i need it now but it's part of the deal number two high labor cost you can look at that kind of two-sided number one if you're an employee hey that's great i make a lot
of money if you're a contractor though like i was the problem is i've got to pay my guys so much money that there's no way to incentivize them on top of it what i would rather see as a residential service provider in the union i would rather see a way that i could pay them a lower amount and incentivize them to do more work to do better work to upsell to do the things that good service plumbing companies are trained to do now i don't mean sell people things they don't need so don't think about
it that way i want them to walk in the house to fix the faucet and just inspect the water heater if the water heaters over a certain age point it out to the people that way if there's an opportunity there we can take good advantage of it the bad thing about union wages costing more it drives the cost of construction up if a union job or say a big government job that needs to be done by the union it's gonna cost more just because the union wages so you know i see both sides of it
but i'll tell you this it benefits both sides meaning i've got a friend who owns an open shop company that used to call me all the time and say hey what are union wages because i want to make sure my guys are making that much to be honest there's not a big difference in union wages versus open shop wages the biggest difference is some of the benefits and we'll talk about those a little bit later but here's the thing the higher union labor it's hard on a small company like me i mean think about it
i'm a small plumbing company that probably averages anywhere from three to five employees at a time but over the last five years i've given the union about four hundred thousand dollars not just for fees not just for things like that but for some of the benefits that we'll talk about later the pension the insurance all kinds of fun things number three what's wrong with the union part of the union cultures now look i understand that the union's old school they've been around forever the bad thing is i say that about myself a lot like i'm
an old school plumber but here's the deal as a union plumber you get in and you start dealing with business agents and business managers that have been around forever you start dealing with the national union members that have been around even longer than forever they may not have known god but they were around when he invented dirt i'm just saying they've been around that long and sometimes a lot of those old cultures don't change a lot of times you get into look this is just a good old boys club if you're a good old boy
we're going to take care of you we're going to bring you along but if you're somebody new trying to come in and do new things unique things different things to make it better we might kind of push you to the side we're looking for a superintendent over here let's don't necessarily hire the best one let's hire this guy here because he's been around for a while and he plays by our rules trust me guys i've seen it being in there but here's the deal too that old school thing if you've got that culture and you've
built somebody and trained somebody to come in and take a role and do the right thing is there anything wrong with that if you've got somebody that you know look i like the way he does things i like the way he runs things you know what you're gonna get all the way through one of my problems with the union is look it's extremely political before i got into the union i would have told you i am not into politics at all but when you go to union meetings you know when it's election time they let
you know hey these are the people you want to elect because they're union friendly these are the people you don't want to elect because they're not union friendly let's take our current president the union would have said hey do not vote for him he's a republican but here's the neat thing that this newly elected president did he called the unions and said hey i want to talk let's make it better for everybody i gotta tell you that is somebody there that was trying to do the right thing and the good thing is the union recognized
it and says hey we're not anti-republican we are anti-anti-labor people and that was a really good way to put it now back to the union cultures i got to tell you when i first got in it was kind of weird i didn't know what a rat was but i knew they thought i was one hey you're that rat plumber hey you're this hey you're that a rat to the union is somebody who came up open shop and then got into the union i've heard lots of complaints about rat plumbers but i came in i worked
hard i did good i worked as hard as everybody else and i knew what i was doing my work looked as well as theirs did and some of them it might have looked a little bit better i understand that mentality there's a lot of open shot plumbers that don't take pride in their work after over 20 years in the union i can tell you there's a lot of union plumbers that don't take pride in their work either and you can look at their work and tell that here's the thing guys it really doesn't matter if
we're union or open shop we've got a job to do the people that do it the best the people that do it the right the people that do it the best and the people that do it right they should make more money and they should be promoted to better positions number four this is a good one black bald if you'd have even told me halfway through the time that i was in the union there was black balling going on i would have said you're nuts but i know for a fact about a guy that had
a job out at the airport and he got blackballed the union actually went to the company that he worked for and said look if you don't get rid of him we're not going to send you labor i've seen it firsthand or else i wouldn't have believed it but the way the local unions do things is kind of up to them and i know this because i've talked to the national union and they're like look we can't control everything but here's the deal if you get in the union and you do a good job keep doing
a good job because when you try to do things your way even if it's a good job you're liable to get blackballed or just told hey look we really don't need you around anymore you're doing too good of a job and guys that one i've seen now here's one that can kind of go both ways number five is the training centers and i got to tell you i used to be an instructor in the union matter of fact i got let go of because they didn't like my union attitude that's funny because i love the
union the union training centers are really good and i think that that to me is what makes joining the union a great thing to do when you're young out of high school you're looking for a career it's a great way to learn the union training centers can be fantastic and i've met some of the greatest instructors across the united states up at the instructor training program that's a neat event and you get up there and you see that the union agrees in teaching as good or better than anybody else and you can tell by the
instructor training program you can see by the way they send their instructors up there every year to get training to get better a lot of local unions just hire their good old boys just hire their friends to come in and be instructors just hire an apprentice that just graduated but you know what he's not bucking the system he's not trying to make things better he's going to do exactly what we tell him to do and that's hard to do when you got bad students because if you've got bad students you need to cut them out
and the school doesn't want you to that drags down the entire class here's my problem with this if you've got bad students find something to do with them but don't leave them in class where they can drag down the entire class there's a lot of people in these classrooms that came in to learn a trade if you're a union instructor take the time to teach them i know this because i heard it when i was there i hear it now and i've heard it all the way in between there are some people down there that
really want to teach there are some people down there that bend over backwards every day to make sure their students are getting the best education possible then again there's some instructors down there that are there for the paycheck and there's no other reason to be there now here's my last issue with the union there is no growth plan i look at this because the union is bringing in the same amount of people it's not graduating anymore it's not turning out anymore they're not improving the system and their numbers are not rising if you go look
at the union's numbers over the last 20 years it's almost like a flat line it's like maybe it died there may be a little bump here and a bump here but the numbers have not increased that much if i was running a business which i am and my numbers had grown as small as the unions had i would be completely disappointed and the reason being is we're in this to grow if you're in the union and you think hey we can grow and take over the world and i think you're right but i don't know
why the union doesn't see it that way they are not doing the things that it could take to grow and reach out to more people teach more people and make people's lives better i talk about making people's lives better what's the good things about the union that is number one the union is great for the employees if you're an employee if you're somebody coming up through the program and you're a hard worker you show up every day great attitude you do what you're supposed to do you can learn you can get a great education you
can have an amazing career here in the dallas area right now you can start in the union at about seventeen dollars an hour and after they've completed the raises that are scheduled by the time you turn out about five years from now you're going to be making over forty dollars an hour that's not bad considering you can come into this right out of high school never having gone to college this is a great opportunity so the pay the benefits i mean you've got insurance paid for you and your entire family now that's about the only
benefit don't get me wrong there's some holidays in there but they're not paid holidays unless you move up into supervision the real benefit is insurance and your pension your pension you've got a great retirement plan set up and you can work 25 years 30 years 35 whatever you put in once you're over five years and you're vested you have a retirement plan to me that is one of the best reasons to be in the union the retirement plan and that insurance now the pac fund remember i talked about all the fees earlier the pac fund
the political action committee that makes sure that your money that you give the union to make things better goes to the right people the union buys lobbyists the union pays off politicians the union does whatever it is it does but they do it the right way to try to make sure things are good to try to make sure things are good for the employees for the contractors and especially for the union but getting the right people in and making sure things are taken care of so everybody's looked after guys that's really a wise investment another
great thing about the union is the fact that they look out for the employees meaning if i scream and yell at an employee you're not allowed to do that you're not allowed on a job site to do a lot of things now the funny thing is the union can do it to me but but i can't do it to the employees anyway that's a whole other story they've got a thing set up and what it is their job is to look out for you make sure you're getting benefits make sure you're getting treated fairly make
sure you've got a job to go to make sure that the boss is doing what he's supposed to do they're really supposed to make sure you're supposed to do what you're supposed to do too the standards of excellence is a big deal making sure jobs are done safely is a big deal when they take care of you they make sure that you have a way to file a complaint you can file charges on somebody you can express your grievance in front of a panel or a group of people trust me there's a lot of things
that you can do to make sure if you're not happy you let somebody know and they'll come look out for you you know what here's my deal if you do your job right and you come in and you're the best employee that you can be nobody's going to yell at you nobody's going to complain and you're not going to have any problems the complaint process is really it's a good thing for the employee remember what i said while ago for small employers the union's horrible it's tough if you're a little bitty company like me trying
to bring in union employees because they don't train them here so i've got to find them outside and try to recruit them to the union and i didn't get a lot of help i still don't get a lot of help but the thing is for big companies it's great the union remember like i told you about the employees if you're an employee you get a good training it's all commercial it's all new construction you're going to get an opportunity to be fantastic if you want to show up and if you want to learn so this
started out what's wrong with the union yeah that's kind of up to you is the union what you want or do you want open shop there's benefits to both sides and i've been telling you all that for a long time there's benefits to union there's benefits to non-union there's benefits to commercial there's benefits to residential there's benefits to new construction there's benefits to service if you're already in the trades whether you're in any other union or just in the trades at all do me a favor leave me a comment down below and let me know
what trade you're in and are you union and non-union and what's the best thing about it just the best thing trust me already know all the bad things i'm roger wakefield elite ap the expert plumber i'll see you in the next video if you don't get flushed
