Sorry for the following negative rant- it deals mostly with the past, and things are so much better now. But here is some of my experiences with union labor shoved my way over the years...

I tried to train one guy, who turned out to be a tweaker and a thief, stole more than $10k worth of my tools. You can spot him by his lack of hair, rotting teeth, and the stack of stolen merchandise in his garage.

Then I tried to train another guy to be an adjuster, who although had some electronics knowledge, turned out to be a totally unreliable drunk, and wasted more of my time. He missed three inspection days as my helper. Hired him back after he went through re-hab, but he still had the shakes and f'd up repeatedly. So much for giving losers a second chance to screw me.

Then there was this little miserable, insecure, retarded guy, who couldn't be trained to pick a door over four years, and had a "poor me, I'm the only one who is working hard, everybody else is taking it easy", piss-poor attitude. Black cloud of self-pity over his head all the time. Previous boss described him as "the most miserable human being in the world". I didn't know what he meant by that until I got to know him. Even so, I tried to give him every chance to improve, for four years. So much for being patient with born losers.

There was another guy who would find car tops to sleep on, and was lazy as sht, then tried to sue me for, wait for it...STRESS! As if he was under any stress at all while he was hiding from an honest days' work, asleep on company time...

Another guy fixed his car and went shopping on my dime, and my time, which is arguably GRAND THEFT larceny.

Another guy was a loud mouthed paranoid racist, who caused two good hard working Hispanic guys to quit. (They said they either had to quit, or kill the jerk) So I lost two there, and fired the other. He viciously refused to give my truck back, until I went over to his house and demanded it back. As if keeping the truck would keep his job. Psycho-Weirdo..

The guy who I set my hopes on now, just got a DUI. His second.

Another one side-swiped both sides of one of my trucks, while driving drunk. Thankfully, this guy has cleaned up his act. He's a good guy, all told.

I've had behavior problems, thieves, retards, drunks, tweakers, criminals, empty-headed, un-safe, un-coordinated, un-teachable, blind, weak, uncooperative, argumentative, combative and stupid people, all sent to me without warning by the Hall. Like the Hall was just throwing slugs at me, that they found under a rock.

Poor quality local membership has cost me untold thousands of dollars, possibly hundreds of thousands over 17 years.

One time, I laid off everybody, all 17 people in the space of just a few days, and started all over from scratch. I only kept one guy, who I had faith in. Interestingly, I didn't get him through the hall. He was hired back in the good old days, when we could use our business intuition, and start people off the street if the bench was empty. He's still with me today, 12 years later. Would that there were more like him in our local.

On a more positive note, after having about 60 members pass through our payroll, there was bout ten fairly good guys, and about 5 really good guys. If only I could schedule jobs to dovetail perfectly, I wish I never would have had to lay them off for lack of work.

Sheesh...You'd think this trade would attract good people who recognize a good opportunity and stick to it. Instead, I got flotsam and jetsom, bathtub-ring, bottom-feeding, cave-dwellers. Or at least, that's what I got by just calling the Hall, and just taking whoever they send, without doing my due diligence to investigate the character and history of the individual. For a while, I thought they were trying to put me out of business by sabotaging my operations with useless shtheads.

Now I see, after years and years of frustration, now I understand, it is all about relationships. I'll never call the Hall again, and just ask for any-old somebody. That's a recipe for disaster.