Question:
As I work in at my union electrician construction job I wonder if it is
going to be sent over seas. In 1989 the complete $500 million Red Dog Mine
was built in the Philippines in 8 modules including one module for a 25
megawatt power plant. Cominco saved about $100 million in labor. The
modules were brought to the Red Dog Mine sea port 70 miles north of
Kotzebue, Alaska by barges and off loaded and moved 54 miles by crawlers
built in Sweden. Electricians in the Philippines worked for 35 cents and
hour and lived in shacks at the work site. They had no licenses, health
insurance, workers comp coverage or unions.
Answer:
Advances in cable manufacturing have
produced a metal-clad cable that is *safe* in Class1Div1 without rigid
conduit?? If this is so, then trying to exclude this form of *safe* cable
from such use, smacks of job-protectionism. Of course it is easier and
takes less skill to install. And if the installed price of this cable per
foot, being spit out of a machine, is lower than the installed price of
rigid conduit, why should anyone be forced to use rigid conduit unless it's
just to protect union jobs? Should US oil refineries (as an example that
has a lot of C1D1) have to pay higher construction costs because such cable
is banned for no reason other than protecting jobs?
Yes! When a third world electrician thinks he can replace me by living in
a shack, making his own tools, going without health care, OSHA safety laws,
labor laws, overtime, and pension benefits, and then work for 35 cents an
hour - he should be shot in the back of the head as far as I am concerned.
Hey, let's have a War! Let's get this battle over once and for all. Don't
try to defeat me and my way of life in such a subtle way. I am willing to
join the military and go blow your whole goddamn country to hell! I and
many others feel that way. We don't give a rats ass about humanitarian
values and trying to elevate the third world. All men are not equal. Only
Americans are equal to one another.
When third world workers are taking American's jobs, it is time to go to war!
