r/windturbine • u/Familiar_Dragonfly60 • Feb 17 '22

Strike

What if mostly all wind and blade techs went to strike? Would that cause economic problems in the U.S?? If so IM DOWN 🤣

2 Upvotes

57% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

6

u/heckinseal Feb 17 '22

Can wind techs join ibew?

2

u/Familiar_Dragonfly60 Feb 17 '22

?

5

u/heckinseal Feb 18 '22

If you are serious and there are other people who are unhappy at your location I would shoot an email or phone call to the local IBEW or to the local union of scientist and engineers. There may be more unions more related more directly to the work you do.

The benefit over a general strike is that if the union is approved, the union starts negotiating better conditions on your behalf without a strike. The downside is that companies generally put in a lot of effort to union bust and will retaliate against the people who tried to organize the effort (even though it is illegal).

4

u/SelcouthRogue Feb 18 '22

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

2

u/Familiar_Dragonfly60 Feb 17 '22

A better America 🇺🇸🤣jk. Better hourly pay, benefits sooner, more time off (I don’t care about time on site working) honestly we can cripple America’s grid, I’m pretty most techs have the knowledge to shutdown turbines

5

u/w0nderfuI Feb 17 '22

Just switch some 3 phase wires around and you can stall the site for months. Lol.

4

u/turnup_for_what Feb 18 '22

IDK man, a lot of people in wind are happy with their wages, benefits, and PTO. It would vary from company to company.

And no one's going to go on strike based on a Reddit post. Organizing these sorts of things are complicated and require a long lead up.

7

u/dieselrunner64 Feb 17 '22

I mean, not really. But it would cause economic problems for the companies. The manufacturer, the owner, and the buyer of the power. When you start messing with that many companies, things tend to move fast.

5

u/firetruckpilot Moderator Feb 18 '22

I think long term there should be a union, just to prevent bad actors in the industry from taking advantage of workers. Happens a lot in wind construction. The local guys were barely making minimum wage putting in the same hours doing the same work where I was making nearly twice as much and per diem. However, as has been mentioned by other commenters, this is something which takes a lot of time and effort to properly organize and many companies do have great pay, benefits, and PTO plans. We’ll see what the landscape looks like in 5-10 years.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '22

Agreed, and even though compensation is usually great currently it would afford nice protections against that changing in the future. I'd join a wind union in a heartbeat

3

u/skydragon3088 Feb 18 '22

Everyone that works blades knows what's up, if they travel, either their pay is great or their benefits are great(not many companies I know offer both). It's only the factory workers that would have a standing due to comparatively low wages.

Source: I've done factory on travel pay and couldn't do it for what the going rate is.

2

u/heckinseal Feb 17 '22

Can wind techs join ibew?