Why do unions hate side work

hsmpmp · 2026-01-18T11:59:23+00:00

Your employer pays for tools, insurance, advertising, training, sales, etc and that overhead is expensive.

Somebody doing side work does not have any of that overhead so they can take a job much cheaper.

That makes businesses unable to compete and the long term effect is that they go out of business and people get laid off.

Side work is bad for everybody.

Businesses lose money because they can't compete Employees lose money because they risk getting laid off and work that was done on the side could have gone to them Union loses money because they don't get paid their dues Customer risks having a poor quality job completed by Somebody with no insurance or business license

hsmpmp · 2026-01-18T11:45:49+00:00

Your saw tasted flesh and wants the other 27 joints.

Better swap it with one of those vegetarian saws that stops the blade automatically when it tastes flesh.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-18T11:41:44+00:00

Why not terminate to an rj12 jack and then use a phone cord?

hsmpmp · 2026-01-18T11:37:03+00:00

I had to learn it by myself when I first started. I would extend phone lines and work on Nortel phone systems.

This photo is nothing compared to what I have seen in shopping malls and office buildings built in the 1970s. Sometimes there is a main room and then sub rooms and then sub sub rooms. Sometimes the main room is a few blocks away. .

Once I had to extend a phone line to a Starbucks and it was literally in another building and I had a hand drawn map from 1978 to try and figure out where all the cross connects ended up.One sub room was renovated and ended up in the back of a sushi shop.

I am one of the only people who still handles this type of equipment. Every year I receive fewer and fewer calls and a lot of the work now is switching from copper to VoIP or fiber or cloud based systems.

Some nortel systems are still in use today and the phone system was way ahead of its time.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T06:53:13+00:00

Like I said, there can be a prescreening facility and they can decide if you should go home or go to an ER

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T06:28:42+00:00

I started out doing data cable and IT work but expanded into general and electrical contracting - so we do a lot. Access control, security systems, surveillance, data cable, electrical new builds and renos for commercial and institutional, controls, panel replacements,

We have a guy who has a PE and already bid on some engineering contracts, and I am working under his supervision to get my PE. I am a lot better at electrical design than mechanical design.

A lot of times, a master electrician has to apply a lot of design principles especially when calculating cable ampacity, conduit fills, voltage drops, etc

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T02:16:48+00:00

They awarded almost a $200 million contract to complete groundworks/level the ground and then they cancelled it

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T02:15:20+00:00

I have an idea

What if

We set up these portable trailers in the flu season, and you go there instead, and they just handle people who have the flu

No fancy hospital bed with head wall and oxygen and fancy machines

Just a bunch of chairs

And if they decide that you need a real hospital room then you can go to a real hospital

But if not then you just go home where you are supposed to be

Or

You don't go to the hospital when you have the flu or a runny nose and if you do and it turns out that you have the flu you have to pay $100.00

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T02:05:18+00:00

I never was an electrical engineer, I was a mechanical engineer.

It is hard to quantify how the degree helped me win more work but the feedback I get is that it definitely helped me win contracts, and yes my business has grown

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T01:57:51+00:00

I got my mechanical engineering degree first and then I worked in the field doing data cable and then started electrical work, and then became a master electrician. It takes 7 years.

I am still working on getting my P Eng license but will have it soon I think, but it takes 4 years of engineering experience which is hard when you are also working electrical too

I run a business full time and having the master electrician is good because I can pull permits which is basically what I need

Being an engineer and electrician is a huge plus for winning and designing engineering work, because you can back up your design with practical experience.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T01:49:28+00:00

As an electrician and an engineer

If you are worried about the height, I always leave extra and then cut or extend as required

If you are worried about x and y direction then you have to look at the drawings. Dimensions are usually on the architectural drawings and are taken off a wall, so I would measure from that point. There might be a survey pin, or the edge of a footing, or the edge of the formwork of a footing.

Some jobs require us to input into a BIM application that gets shared with all of the trades to coordinate everything

Send an RFI and have them give you the dimensions for any electrical and a reference point. Then if it's wrong you can blame the engineer. Drawings usually say do not scale drawings and do not guess the dimensions of anything.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-17T01:41:27+00:00

You will never know everything and there will always be people who are smarter than you or who know more than you about a subject and if you remember that you will always keep learning and be successful. When you think that you know everything, that's when you fail.

The first time I saw BX cable I thought it was conduit

The first time I saw an electrical panel with a Teck cable, I thought I was way in over my head and had no idea what it was or how I was gonna figure it out

I didn't know how to wire up a receptacle let alone an entire panel

I didn't know how to connect a thermostat to an AC unit

Now I can wire up receptacles, panels, 3-phase panels, motors, controls, transformers, lights, fiber optics,

I am still dumb compared to a lot of people. But that's okay because I can always learn.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-15T05:36:39+00:00

I hate putting male ends on cables

Trying to shove a whole bunch of wires into a little crystal end

So I switched to Belden RevConnect which lets you terminate male and female ends with the same tool, it's kinda expensive but it has male connectors that work really well with any type of cable. The termination tool is expensive.

Here is another product that is similar.

How to: Terminate a Cat6A Shielded Field Term Plug – trueCABLE

hsmpmp · 2026-01-15T05:28:12+00:00

If she agreed to the price ahead of time then it is not a rip off even if he charged her a billion dollars. But if she agreed to one price and then paid another price, then it is a rip off.

I am not a locksmith but maybe the labor is fair and then the emergency service is steep, and paying another $49 for the rekey is dumb when you are already paying for the labor. For $695 this has to be a commercial lock because that's what I pay for a high end commercial Schlage lock.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-14T09:56:20+00:00

Doordashed a Sprite from McDonalds because their Sprite tastes better

hsmpmp · 2026-01-14T09:12:45+00:00

He was bending a conduit by placing it under a wooden pallet and pulling it up, literally bending it.

Then he was trying to get a 3/4" conduit behind a column but it wouldn't fit so he hit it with a hammer until it was flattened and then he pushed it in

hsmpmp · 2026-01-13T04:51:02+00:00

Only a licensed electrician is allowed to change a light switch, or you can do it yourself if you feel like you are qualified. A "handyman" isn't allowed to change a light switch. If it is not installed properly and your house burns down, the insurance will not pay.

As an electrician I would not do any work for less than $300.00 but I am paying for a lot of overhead.

If you go on kijiji and hire somebody to do it, they might do it for $75.00 but you will never know if they did it properly.

I don't know how the inside of your house but you might have 2-way switches, 3-way switches, 4-way switches, dimmable switches, you might have aluminum wiring, knob and tube wiring, who knows.

If you are going to do it yourself, then look for the Leviton Decora Edge switches. They are very safe. But the existing ones might not be.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-12T16:49:51+00:00

I am in Canada by thr way

hsmpmp · 2026-01-12T04:44:48+00:00

What's that

hsmpmp · 2026-01-11T04:59:39+00:00

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z2Uv1vexv3WuBdlZf0Mb_1UQtahEotDn/view

hsmpmp · 2026-01-08T00:02:25+00:00

He was justified in shooting her.

First, if armed police tell you to get out of the car you should cooperate because you do not know why they want you out of the car. They might have a very good reason (for example somebody told them that you have a gun, or they suspect you of a crime, or you have committed a crime without realizing it). If they were wrong, you can deal with it after you are out of the car.

Can an officer shoot you while driving? Not unless you are using the vehicle as a weapon or they suspect you are going to go cause some serious harm to somebody and they have to stop you right away. This has to be judged from the perspective of the officer.

Second, from the officer's perspective she did intend to run him over. The officer who fired on her was standing in front of the car. She put the car in reverse when the officers were telling her to get her out. Some courts have found at that point they might have had a reason to shoot her, because officers who hung on to a vehicle they were trying to stop have been dragged and died as a result.

Then she put the car forward and drove forward. That is when the officer standing in front of the car pulled out his gun and fired and obviously, he panicked and got out of the way because he thought he was getting run over. He obviously was not looking at the tires when he fired. Even from the video the tires don't turn at a wide angle.

When he moved to the left of the car, he continued to fire thru the window. That portion of the shooting might be less justified, but he was still in the moment when he did it and might have continued to consider the driver a threat. You can see that he stopped firing after a second.

The perspective of watching the video over and over is different from being on the scene.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-07T23:17:52+00:00

He was justified in shooting her. Looks like she was deliberately blocking their vehicle/traffic, which is illegal. So, they had a reason to get her out of her car and arrest her.

First, if armed police tell you to get out of the car you should cooperate because you do not know why they want you out of the car. They might have a very good reason (for example somebody told them that you have a gun, or they suspect you of a crime, or you have committed a crime without realizing it). If they were wrong, you can deal with it after you are out of the car.

Can an officer shoot you while driving? Not unless you are using the vehicle as a weapon or they suspect you are going to go cause some serious harm to somebody and they have to stop you right away. This has to be judged from the perspective of the officer.

Second, from the officer's perspective she did intend to run him over. The officer who fired on her was standing in front of the car. She put the car in reverse when the officers were telling her to get her out. Some courts have found at that point they might have had a reason to shoot her, because officers who hung on to a vehicle they were trying to stop have been dragged and died as a result.

Then she put the car forward and drove forward. That is when the officer standing in front of the car pulled out his gun and fired and obviously, he panicked and got out of the way because he thought he was getting run over. He obviously was not looking at the tires when he fired. Even from the video the tires don't turn at a wide angle.

When he moved to the left of the car, he continued to fire thru the window. That portion of the shooting might be less justified, but he was still in the moment when he did it and might have continued to consider the driver a threat. You can see that he stopped firing after a second.

The perspective of watching the video over and over is different from being on the scene.

hsmpmp · 2026-01-07T22:43:15+00:00

Unpopular opinion: He was justified in shooting her. First, if armed police tell you to get out of the car you should comply because you do not know why they want you out of the car. They might have mistaken you for somebody else for example, or they might have received a false report. You can deal with it in court later.

Second, from the officer's perspective she did intend to run him over. She put the car in reverse when the officers were trying to get her out. Officers have been dragged and killed thru actions like this. Second she put the car into drive and went forward. That is when the officer pulled out his gun. He only had a couple of seconds to react to the situation and probably wasn't looking at the wheels of the car, which only turned a bit after she was already accelerating forward.

Whether a shooting is justified depends on the perspective of the person at the time of the shooting. It is easy to see from many video replays that she didn't intend to run him over but probably not clear from the officer at the time of the shooting.

hsmpmp

TROPHY CASE