#pipefitter tag

[fruithonorific]

men in construction are insane........ we were talking about what we make vs our partners vs other locals etc, for a typical 2000-hour work year (40 hours/week for 50 weeks) and one of the apprentices said "yeah but how often do you get on a 40 hour a week job" 💀💀💀 like buddy 1) plenty of jobs I've worked were 40 a week with the occasional Saturdays (soccer stadium, neuroscience research building, institute of health building expansion) 2) a 40 hour work week was what union members fought and died for it's not supposed to be "normal" to work more than that, or to want to

[fruithonorific]

straight but generally accepting male coworker (electrician, i am a pipefitter) likes to ask me ridiculous shit at work. like knowing fully that i am a bisexual woman he asked me this morning "is it weird for a man to get a pedicure" and I told him no. and then said "for real though what did you think my gay ass was going to say to that"

[fruithonorific]

work has been shit lately but i'm playing music on the deck on my job site radio today and one of the ironworkers requested pink pony club. i'm calling that a win

[fruithonorific]

Man, I know I already said this before but that "give the working class material and space to organize, don't worry about theory, the working class already knows how and why they're being exploited" post still has me so heated

I have spent over an hour today listening to an old white blue-collar middle class pipefitter (who is in a union, makes over 100k a year and whose wife makes even more) bluster about how engaging in politics is pointless, media is all propaganda, don't believe any of it, and yet every political opinion he's spouted has been so conservative you'd think he was an avatar for the Fox News channel. ("But MSNBC is just as bad!") Climate change is a hoax, he says. Vaccines are a scam, you can't violate my personal freedom by making me get one, blah blah blah. Cancel personal property tax. Do away with income taxes. Stop increasing minimum wage, "those jobs are for high school kids, they aren't meant for someone to be able to afford a big house on." Section 8/low income housing don't work, he says, it just hurt the people who get it more than it helps. Fuck electric cars, fuck public transit. Secure the border.

You know what material support without theory gets you in the imperial core? This!!! A working class that supports a hodgepodge of neoliberal, libertarian, and fascist viewpoints and doesn't understand any of them.

[fruithonorific]

when you have to braze a joint* and the electricians' wire is less than 6 inches from your flaming torch 👩🏻‍🏭🔥

*heat copper fittings and pipe to ~1500°F/815°C to melt silver phosphorus brazing rod inside the joint, making it solid

[fruithonorific]

Our local is doing a mental health seminar — four of them, actually, starting with one at the end of this month — and I'm super jazzed that our union's being proactive about this (genuinely did not expect this out of the old white guys in charge!) but at the same time I'm like. I wanna be involved, but I don't know how much I can do/what insights I can contribute. Mental health in the construction industry is such a gnarly problem (second highest suicide rate out of any industry in the US) and so much of it is tied up in the fact that 98-99% of the workers are men, who are more likely to commit suicide in the first place. I wanted to bring up the mental health seminar with the other apprentices at lunch today but I couldn't find a good time to because so many of the guys seem like that's the absolute last thing on their mind. Work, money, booze, family (if they have one), pranking/joking around with other guys at work, and sex are their priorities, in order, if I were to guess.

[fruithonorific]

Started listening to a metronome while welding the fill and cap. Not amazing but it's getting better!

[fruithonorific]

On a different note we were walking back in to the training center from lunch and a couple of the service fitters asked me how my welding was going, are you on pipe yet etc, and I was like yeah I'm on vertical pipe, and my friend (formerly construction, now service) was like "she's doing great, she's almost there!" And I was like 🥺🥹 well if *you* believe in me dammit I have to believe in myself at least a little bit. Fuck.