Yea, and out of a $70/hour "stick man" pay how much is removed for "Union Dues" and all the other BS along with it? I'd guess around $55/hr. ????
can a Professional Land Surveyor work for a Union Shop?
Yes, it's pretty common around here.
@flga-pls-2-2
No, they really do pull in that money. I found it hard to believe when I first came to a high PW area (Alaska), too. 10 years ago prevailing wage for a "chainman" was around $45/hr. As a non-union employer, I paid the fringe in cash, so chainmen were making...you guessed it, $45/hr. The same guy would make $19/hr when we did residential work. As others have noted, PW can be spotty, so if someone wants to remain employed they'll take the rain with the sunshine when it comes to wages.
Thank you for the clarification.
The cost of living is extremely high in Alaska isn't it? In the '70's half the Survey Department at ITTCDC (developers of Palm Coast) left to work on the Alaska pipeline. The salaries were outrageously high but so were the necessities of life. Some got rich and some didn't. ????
@flga-pls-2-2
It's still a good place to be a surveyor, but the consistently high wages of the pipeline days are (mostly) gone. Cost of living here in Fairbanks, all things considered, isn't that high anymore. We have the typical box stores (Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart) and Amazon Prime, so it's pretty affordable. Real estate is reasonable when compared to coastal/metro America.
Absolutely, on some jobs it is a contract requirement, they are often exempted from being required to join a union under the "Management" umbrella but that is at discretion in the general case.
Of course an LS would want to earn above and beyond scale in the typical situation.
It is a rare enough situation to be insignificant, butting up against land boundaries however is of course not uncommon at all.
The prevailing wage scale is in place to stop private survey shops from undercutting union shops through the savings on labor. It is not a perfect solution to be sure, a union worker receives a good wage along with pension and healthcare, the prevailing wage thing just throws a lot of cash at a non union worker.
I have been the lowest paid guy on many job sites working on big construction sites for non union shops, I much prefer being among the highest paid but that is only my perspective.
