Pay cut my ass!!!

In previous posts I wrote about this class I'm taking next week. I was really excited because I even had a potential new boss. Someone who was willing to take me in with what little experience I have and make me a new testing and air balancing crew member.

Well we have been kind of sort of talking through a middle person. I saw this middle person at the union meeting last night and let him know I was done with my resume and was just working on the cover letter to go with it. He let me know that "potential boss" was under the assumption that I was willing to go back to apprentice wages while I was learning.

Now that's crap if you ask me. I didn't spend five years in school busting my ass to only be knocked back down because I'm trying to better myself as a worker by learning something new. I don't know exactly how low he wanted to bump me but I won't take it.

I did ask the Business Agent for that division of sheet metal, the guy who put on the class, what he thought of this situation. He told me to under no circumstances accept a pay cut. I am a journey man sheet metal worker and that is what I get paid.

You can only imagine the relief I felt when my feelings were backed up by someone with clout. I also got to find out a little more about this class. This class has horrible hours (8am to 5pm) and is going to be very intense. They are trying to teach us enough in one week to take a test that some guys are spending a lot of time in school to take the same test. I have to take a Saturday test. If I pass the Saturday test, then I qualify to take the same test school guys are taking come June or July. Kind of a little ways off in the future.

So I'm back to square one. Back to finding work. Have a few ideas though. I want to go work with Garrett and his company. He's been offering to drop my name for quite some time now. I've always had another plan I was working on at the moment. So, changing directions, I'm going to try architectural sheet metal. We'll see how it goes.