That letter rings totally true as a reflection of the worker ethos where I worked three summers through 1981. The location was a pulp mill near the Pacific in Washington State, and the maintenance workers were the 'slowdown' workers. When my dad started working there, 80 production employees were supported by 60 'millwrights.' Six years later, I worked a summer job in the mill, and the millwright population was up to 140. By the time my dad retired from the mill about five years later, it was up to 200.
They used to joke about their work ethic: work one job a day, no matter how small. And they imposed union rules on who could do what. An electrician who needed a pipe bolt undone would have to call a pipefitter. He would go wander as much as 6-8 hours waiting.
When the pipefitter arrived, he'd see what needed to be done and then take a break. After the break, if he'd discovered that some machinery needed to be partly disassembled (even if it's just a few screws and bolts), he'd call for a millwright and then wait. The disassembly might not happen now until the next shift (the next day).
After the electrician replaced the grounding wire say the next day, the reassembly would be done when they could scare up the millwright first and then the pipefitter. Then the shift foreman, who actually did work hard, would be called and sign off.
While each person was on a 'ticket' and waiting, he was not allowed to work another job, else a union grievance would be filed.
I was a clean up worker and worked my ass off of course. If I changed a light bulb and was caught, I could have been fired. If I tightened a bolt, I could be fired. The company would do that in order to prevent a series of grievances from the union and a possible work stoppage, even though I would have saved them hundreds or thousands of dollars.
One time I was near the millwrights and heard on their radio of a 'new guy' who'd finished his job at 10 am (3 hours into the shift) and wanted another job. They all laughed. "He'll learn!" they said in unison. "A job like that should have taken two days," one explained to me.
But when the mill finally was threatened with shutdown and layoffs, the mill was abuzz with millwrights and the rest looking for stuff that sometimes had been wanting repair or safety improvement for years. The mill was eventually closed around 2006 permanently. |
