Post 1 : A closer look at Bob MacCleod's Union Kick Apprentice Program

It looks just like Queen Christine's. On one side of the fence are local citizens and on the other side is Union and Democrat operatives. The core argument for the program is that there will be a lack of qualified tradesmen in the future. The real agenda is to muscle non union and small contractors out of public works.

Since we are at 5.5% statewide unemployment and even higher in Lewis Counties, you'll need a glass of water to swallow that one. This is especially true given that you already have prevailing wage requirements for public works.

First evaluate the program by it's financial merits. A few other muni's have implemented the program, so there has been time enough to see if there is tax payer benefit. At best the news here is only slightly on the negative. Click on the scans for the full image- sorry the county would not send me the original electronic versions of any of these docs. I did ask for them in native electronic format.







Next check out the lukewarm response from a contractor- this was in fact the most positive written response from any contractor in the mix.

Now I complained that the public only found out about this at the last minute and MacCleod was trying to limit this to union cronies as much as possible. It turns out I wasn't the only one who "missed the bus." Well- mostly this was because we had a union bus driver.



Other contractors complained that the Union apprentices they had gotten on previous projects- really sucked- to the point of causing ten of thousands in damage (in accidents that could have cost hundreds of thousands and been life threatening) . In short- they would never have anything to with this program if they were not coerced. We can thank Bob for giving us the coercion.