Out Of Touch

Today will be a fairly easy day at work. I'll by busy but it won't be overwhelming. Yesterday was a real hoot though. Ok while I'm good friends with one of the welders at work and this will sound bad this is genuinely what happened.

Bub, famous from this post right here, was asked to do some extra work to help out the short handed machine shop. Machine shop has two people, welding shop has two people. The difference is that welding shop hasn't had much work at all for years since they shut down the engine shop. Most of the days of the welders is spent visiting other shops, hanging out, and surfing online. That's literally it and without exaggeration.

They have to get certifications to hold their jobs which also earns them additional money per hour. So they are very well paid for literally doing nothing or very very little.

So this job came around to take over of pressing races into wheels, a simple job and a job in which my shop also has a hand in. I've seen it done a thousand times and could do it in my sleep. So the supervisor has the idea to keep welding shop relevant and give them a job to do during the day as they really don't have anything to do.

Welding shop pitches a fit about it as they feel it's not in their job description to do so. The lead goes to the union steward and files a grievance in fact to keep them from doing this very easy job. It's a principle thing I guess with them despite their large paychecks, both earn considerably more than I do and I pull in a nice paycheck myself.

I don't get upset when they add jobs to our shop, I get upset when they start removing jobs from our shop as that only leads to bad things eventually. When contract time comes around again, and it will next year, I'd be very nervous as a welder and they figure out they can get along just fine without the entire shop and shut it down. It's hard to find a job these days even with a skill like that. Welders are plentiful in this world.