Electrician wages have always varied according to where you are, and when you worked there.  Union wages were always more than non-Union.  Big city wages were always more than small community wages.

I started out with nothing.  Literally.  The first thing I ever did in the electrical trade was to set up a wind charger on the family farm.  (Blog post #1)  When I went to work for a family friend, helping him change farm houses from wind chargers to the REA (Blogs 2-4), I can’t even remember now what I was paid, but I’m sure it was less than a dollar an hour.

The only expense I had in those days was gasoline, and it was at $.21 per gallon.  I wasn’t paying much attention to wages at that time.  I was more interested in learning.

The first wages I can remember receiving was in Glasgow, Montana.  I was working for an electrical contractor that paid me the grand sum of $1.50 per hour.

One day a gentleman came around saying he represented the U.S. government.  He wanted to know how many had served in the military.  There were two of us employed on that job.  The other guy had served in the army, so he was given papers to fill out.  The papers were to record how long he had worked at whatever kind of work he was doing.  He was supposed to fill them out weekly.

I told the government man that the military had notified me that they didn’t want me and I didn’t argue with them.  (Maybe they had determined that I was too crazy, “but it kept me from going insane.”)

The government man gave me the papers anyway, saying it wouldn’t hurt to fill them out weekly and send them in.

The other guy faithfully filled out his papers weekly.  I worked with him for several years and he finally received a certificate from the government saying he was a journeyman electrician.

I never sent any paperwork in.  I was too independent and I thought it was a waste of time.  I got a certificate at the same time as the other fellow.  I was really surprised!

My wife tells me I save big boxes, in which to put little boxes, the certificate must be among my souvenirs somewhere.

As I wasn’t in the IBEW, my wages gradually went up.  By the time I left Montana in 1969 my wages had gotten up to just under $5.00 per hour.

A well engineered and built tool is appreciated by the craftsmen that use it.  A tool that breaks while in use is discouraging, as well as dangerous.  You can seriously injure yourself.  Really, to do good work, you need good tools.

When you work with a poorly designed and built tool it is easy to recognize that the designer had no experience in the trade for which the tool was built.  However, I have seen some farm implements designed and built by a farmer, later manufactured and sold by a large equipment manufacturing company.

This can happen with hand tools also.  One tool that I built for myself to make my work life easier was later copied by a tool manufacturer.

One shop I worked for had a crew doing high voltage line work.  Whenever the high voltage line crew used a tool belonging to the low voltage crew, the tool would invariably come back broken, bent, or in pieces.  As well as with pieces lost.  That is one reason I am very reluctant to loan out tools.  Also, when you’re working in a large crew, it is not unheard of for a tool to get damaged, broken, or grow legs and walk off the job.

In one instance, I had purchased a new ½” EMT pipe bender.  I was careful to keep it near me at all times, laying it by my side as I worked.  Soon a large, heavy workman came by and stepped on it.  A piece was broken off that made the tool absolutely useless.  The portion that was broken was made of pot metal, making it irreparable.  It wasn’t so much that I had to purchase a new bender, but it was such a waste.

There was a scene played out in front of me on one job that had to do with tool usage.  One day a carpenter showed up on our job with a brand new 6’ level.  He was so proud of that thing.  I think he went around checking the level of everything just for the opportunity to use it.

He was standing on a ladder with the level leaning against the wall next to him.  A Native American fellow came in from doing cement work out back.  The Native American stopped and gazed longingly at the new level.

The conversation went like this:

“Hey Tim, can I borrow your level?”

Tim looked down and said; “What do you want to use it for?”

“I need to screed off some cement out back.”

There was a slight pause, and then Tim said: “If you use my level to screed off cement you will wish Custer had won!”

The Native American went outside chuckling to himself.

In the IBEW, you are limited to certain hand tools that you may carry with you, and or supply yourself.  Large tools are supposed to be supplied by the employer.  This situation can cause a certain amount of differences.

Some Union locals are very lenient and others very demanding in their interpretation of the requirements.  If the employer doesn’t have the tool you need, you are stuck; sometimes to the point of not being able to do your job.  The whole situation bothered me very much because I had made some of my hand tools myself.

For instance, I had engineered and created some wire pulling guides so that I could pull wire by myself.  The Union would not have liked to discover those tools.  From their perspective, it was better for the employer to hire another man for a man-and-a-half job.

If you damaged, broke, or lost some of your employer’s tools, it put you in a bad standing with him.

There were times when I was working on the Expo grounds in Spokane in 1974 that I observed some workers become “dissatisfied” with the tool they were using.  (either from damage to the tool or the ignorance of the user)  The tool was tossed into the river and reported as “lost” to the employer.

On other occasions, when a man was drafted by the military, he would toss his tools into wet concrete because he figured he was never coming back.

Lastly, if you supplied a better grade tool for yourself (personal hand tools) there was a very good chance that it would “walk off the job.”  As a result, while I was in the union, my personal hand tools were cheap grade.  I couldn’t afford to keep buying expensive ones for other people.

Sometimes though I have met and worked with people that help you retain your tools.  One time when I was putting conduit in a block wall while it was being built, I dropped some tools down the center of the blocks.  They went all the way to the bottom of the wall.

I was trying to figure out what to do, and how to get my tools back when the block layer saw my dilemma.  He offered to retrieve my tools for me.  He located where they were and slid a block horizontally out of the wall.  We were able to reach down and get the tools.

He had the option of doing this because the mortar was not yet set.  When I had retrieved the tools he used fresh mortar and reset the block.  That’s the kind of cooperation that makes a job go well.

When I started AdenBecks, and hired men to work for me, I started up-grading my tools, as I wanted the men to be productive.

So far, so good.