My dad was a union electrician, but as a kid I never really knew what that meant. One Summer I was working with my dad as an electricians helper an we were laying some rigid conduit in a foundation area. we needed to extend a little ditch to lay some pipe to a footer. I was going to do it. It wasn't rocket science. My dad said "We can't do that, there was a different union that dug the ditches". They won't be on the job for a few days so we'll have to work around it. I thought, Wow!, how counter productive is that?