It kind of chaps me a little when people bash the union and/or workers. I can't speak for most outfits, but where I work we work long hours(12hrs is a short day) and spend much of the summertime away from family and home. I myself have a wife/step-daughter/couple dogs/mortgage/vehicle payments/doctor payments etc.. just like most everyone else has and I work hard for what I have now coming all the way from back in the day of living in my car.
I don't believe I was "bashing" the unions/workers there bud, a job with a Union affiliated company is not a bad thing, well.....depends on the union, even then, the employee's are merely pawns in the game and are there for a job. Be proud that you are supporting a family and working for a living rather than taking advantage of all the rest of us working for you. Thanks for doing your part.
The point was that there are stipulations in the Stimulus that Union companies get a certain amount of the Federal contracts, call it what you want but look at some of the Unions did to help get BO elected and put 2 and 2 together. Whatever.... people are working and bringing home paychecks, and almost 10% of the population isn't.... There was just a bid come across my desk the other day, it was for 200+ trailers and I was quite excited, until I read the qualifications.... Large business (have to have over xxx employee's) and restricted to 2 companies, wont name names, but we could have bid the product but can't because we are a small business. So, Federal stuff isn't as much for the "small guy" as one might think, and after doing all the paper work involved..... you'd never imagine they were worried about tree's.
Low bid doesn't always get the work, and the bids can be open to only certain qualifed bidders, there's a bunch and if your familiar with that process you know what I'm talking about.
Here in SD we are seeing some low-ball bidding going on for projects, and typically the low bid gets the job and Co-ops and Telco's are regretting it in the end in some cases due to the quality of the job and the hidden costs. Companies are/were struggling to find work and are expanding their territories and bidding ridiculous costs just to keep their people working rather than standing in the Unemployment line, that means they have to cut costs or speed up their work which usually means a less quality job is done.
