I took that as an eventual $60k/year. Maybe I'm wrong.

Was an iron worker for local out of KC in the late 80's. I assure you the things I'm reading in here are factual. It's a hard way of life. One thing someone had mentioned on the first page is knowing the BA. If you're not good friends with the guy that gives out the jobs you more than likely will sit on the bench in a down economy. It's very political.








 

Current journeyman wage is about 72k per year(based on a 40 hour week). First year apprentices start at 60% of that, with a 5% increase every 6 months. So somewhere around the second half of year 2, an apprentice will make 60k + per year plus medical, pension, etc. A small portion of that goes toward union dues as well, and this is assuming the apprentice works 40 hrs/wk for the whole year.

Good points. I have no illusions that this is a 100% safe, risk free career, and I understand it will be extremely grueling work physically.  On the other hand, wouldn't you agree it has improved safety wise since the 80's? If I understand correctly, you guys didn't even tie off with a harness back then...

That's my understanding, fancy harnesses etc...We had just a rope to tie off, lol, the load inertia would probably break your back... We never tied off, didnt have time to do that. Nonetheless I'm most likely to fall walking iron with 50 lbs of welding lead and a belt with a bolt bag and tools that weigh another 40 lbs +.

 

One of the main points I was trying to make though is you might not always get work. Economy, union politics etc... Many iron workers worked 6 - 9 months of the year and drawn un employment the rest. Besides that impacting your wallet it may also impact your benefits including healthcare etc...
 
























 

It seems there were 3 kinds of iron workers.





















 

Take the biggest job we had going in the area.  It was scheduled for 4 ten hour days ( or nights). Friday was 8 hours straight time.  Saturday was 8 hours of time and a half.  Sunday is always double time.  With the night shift differential for me as a journeyman carpenter put me right at 10K a month.  The lowest aporentice starts out at 50% scale.  So if I was making $120,000 a year as a JM, a first term apprentice would be making $60K.

I just so happen to have a paystub handy, so here is a very close in or zoomed in pic:


Just about every trade was topping out right at $30 to $35 per hour straight time.  Laborers might have been right at $25 or $27.  A lot of those guys were either on permits or they just bought their "book" outright.

EDIT:  anything over 8 hours during the weekdays or weeknights is time and a half too.

Slight thread drift...remember this scene of Luke Skywalker:


That is what it is was like building hanging scaffold like these:


The patented scaffold systems go together like an erector set:

That don't look bad at all. I would rather be there than in a boiler.
Lots of rope or a shitty load in.

I was an Ironworker for 10 years.  I miss the work,the challenges, the crew I worked with.  I don't miss the beating it put uponeth my body.

It isn't much different out of the KC hall today or Dayton, OH, or Pittsburgh, or...albeit I've been out of the game for a bit.



You are 100% correct with your points 1, 2, and 3.  I called the first group the "Steady Eddies."  They always had a job, never had to sign the books, and the "true" union IW guys sometimes hated them or were very jealous of them depending on who it was.  The 2nd group seems to make up the majority of many union trades; the guys who are aligning themselves polticially just to get off the books.  I've seen it with Laborers, Bricklayers, Pipefitters/Steamfitters/etc., Sparkies, etc.  



The last group...well a lot of the bench sitters weren't just there riding the pine because they didn't vote the right way...lots of them had issues, were completely dangerous, and didn't work well with the first two groups.  Since we were an out of town contractor 95% of the time that is usually who the BA sent us..."nothing but my best men."  



OP there are some very good points of advice in this thread to help you along.

Man you should look at a different trade. My dad was a iron worker, he retired at 63, 6 years ago.    You know they wear a belt full of spud wrenches and bolt bags that most men couldn't wear all day let alone climb with.  I've seen my dad many days after work wearing shorts and the inside of his legs were black and blue from hanging on while swinging a 10lb beater, same with his forearms black and blue.   It's also a rough bunch of men, dad was still tangling with men much younger than him even through his late 50s,  he wouldn't take shit from anyone.    Rethink your choices unless your looking for a hard way to make a living. Good luck.

I remember one of the first few days in apprentice school, they told us under no circumstances, are we to buy alcohol for the guys when we went to get lunch.

I just called local 396 and asked them about their "out of work list".  Basically, who is sitting on the bench.  The gal couldn't give me an exact number but she said they have been sitting at about 35% unemployment for at least 4 years now.

So one third are NOT working.

Their number is (314)647-3008 .

go for ac work/ tin work

electrician is what i would shoot for. very good job and way safer than rebar/iron work

go for electrician. trust me way better work and more ability to work into your older years

Word, less affected by weather, worked more days out of the year, less  chance of falling, but, their backs are usually bad, knees usually not much better.

Local #1 Chicago, (structural Ironwork began here in Chicago) has been running about the same as far as I hear. I've been out of the game for over twenty years but until a year ago you wouldn't see a tower  crane on the Chicago skyline to save your soul. This has been going on for at least 6 years.

Good luck OP !!! I went thru the EXACT same thing in 2010. I was over burrnt out in Nursing, physically sick of it. I love all these experts telling you to stay in such a great field  Granted you are going for an extreme shift I did something similiar. I was a nurse for 13 years, I could no longer deal w/the 600 lb pt's, the chronic infections of IV dope users, the overall violence of drunks attacking me and just have to take it. My back was shot, I was beat up, etc...I quit and  sat at home until 2013 healing up. AT 47 I did the unthinkable, decided to attend the local Criminal Justice academy and fight it out for jobs w/20 something mil vets, and tons of other experienced officers looking for very few openings w/the top agencies. I plowed ahead and and happy to say I am well into my new career that everyone and I mean everyone told me I would hate, wash out, never get hired etc...  Good luck and at least give it a shot, keep your RN lic active so you can always go back if need be.

the last part of the post brought back old memories, I once watched my dad, never one with an even temper, hang a job superintendent out over the side of a three story building because they were having a very heated argument.

I've worked next to them a few times. It's a tough job.

Good luck OP!

OP,  you're bat shit crazy.  Get a higher nursing degree and move up.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1594489_FBI_Indictment_Against_10_Union_Workers_Who_Torched_a_Church_Reads_Like_Something_Out_of_A_Movie.html

A couple observations from a guy who set,  sheeted and roofed  steel commercial buildings, (none of the spooky skyscraper stuff), for a few years in the late Eighties, when I was around 26-29 years old.
Non-union, small company hiring local farm kids (mostly) and training them on-the-job. We usually worked 4 or five men per crew, depending on a lot of different factors.

The guys who turn out to be  good at that sort of thing are usually built physically stout/burly to begin with.
I'm tall and lean, and it always seemed to me that the shorter guys didn't have to work quite as hard at maintaining their balance when tightrope-walking a thirty-foot roof purlin from one truss to the next, fifty feet above the concrete.  
Maybe it's mostly because my knees were half-shot by then (from other poor "career choices"), but that was tough for me.

I understand that OSHA would freak out if that were done these days, but back then that's how we did it -no tie-offs, no safety harness. You just walked over there!
 I've seen a few guys do a one-arm hang catching ahold after falling off a Zee purlin, (very hard on the wrist!) before being pulled back up, but I was fortunate to have never had to witness an actual "landing."
However, I DID witness, and experienced, lots of cuts, scrapes, bruises, burns, sprains, broken bones, smashed fingers, etc. Frostbite and severe sunburn, too.
 Steel-it's usually either hot or cold, and it's ALWAYS hard, sharp and heavy!

I could take the heat and could work circles around most of the crew on the hottest summer days, but I hated the cold, and still do.
  I didn't have to deal much with the pill-poppers that everyone talks about these days, but a few of the guys I worked with had drinking problems to some extent.
They were weeded out pretty quickly by the bosses, who didn't have to answer to a union.

 The three partners who started the business and led the crews were great employers and became lifelong friends, but I had to quit it after those few years and .
I realized by then, that I had started in that field about ten years too late, and that my body would never make it to retirement at the rate I was gradually wrecking it.

  I still work in a related trade, (structural steel fabrication), but not out in the weather and up in the air.

Good luck whatever path you decide to take.
I'm not going to persuade or dissuade you toward that career path, but if you're truly burned out you've got to get off the one you're on and take a DIFFERENT path.
Just the way it is.

A tenant of mine was just hired by Union Pacific. Seems like a better option.

Go sheetmetal and get in the service side of it.

What do you say to a guy with an IQ of 30?.......nice weld.

What is long and hard on an IW? ........third grade.


Good luck OP. Trades is an honest way to cut a living.

Always be thinking how you will get out the day you get in, and come to grips with the fact you will not leave the trade feeling as good as you did when you got in.......that's why we make the money.

I had some great times and a few bad times while in. About 20 years into it when anyone asked how many years I had I always told them " Long enough to know I don't want to do it anymore, but not long enough to retire"

I earned every ache and pain that I have. Would I do it again in a heart beat.

One  thing I always tried to do with the Apprentices is teach them as much as possible because they are paying for my Retirement now like I did for the older guys before me.

Never be afraid to take a one day job. Sometimes that call is to see who is hungry enough to take the call. I took jobs like that and it would be 5 years or more before I ever went back to the hall.

You Sir speak the truth! And you cracked me up too

I was in the Iron Workers Union for three years back in the '80's when it dried up hard.

I'm working in industrial maintenance/ construction now and I like it most days.

I get to work with boilers, refrigeration, high voltage, control equipment, etc... in food processing.

It's the Teamsters union so the benefits are good and the pay is not bad.

The best thing is every minute of everyday is different, never boring or redundant.

I will say I never figured I'd be doing what I'm doing twenty years ago, that's for sure.

Cheers

ILB

There is a fourth group -  Boomers.  These guys run all over the country or all over the world doing the big jobs.  The ones I've run into make a lot of money - and are most always broke.  Living out of suitcase on the road is expensive - they spend a lot of time in bars and casinos because they're bored and there paychecks are gone before they get home for the night.

Like all trades / occupations there are a few that are smart and are smart with their money.  There are a lot of them though that make 60-70k a year and are flat broke driving a beater truck looking for an advance on their check.

In this economy I'd think it's going to be tough to get more than 1200- 1400 hours in as an apprentice unless you are very well thought of by someone.

I just spent all day breathing the filthy emissions from a mobile tamper, the ridiculous clouds of fine concrete dust from a demo saw my partner and I were using plenty, and the eye-burning gas/oil exhaust from same demo saw.  We actually wore the NIOSH cartridge respirators our foreman provided, plus ear and eye protection, and were the only two in the building who bothered.  At least the building was open on both ends, but very little breeze to move that shit along.

While I was trying to run underground pipe amidst this chaos and stench, I had a moment to ponder the 70 degree, climate-controlled conditions I used to work in.  Most days are much less unpleasant than this, but I'd think long and hard about what you're getting into.  Sounds like Iron work is much worse.  The people I work with generally are NOT on drugs or drinking- at least during the work day.  After the first year, once your sworn in, you can (and probably should) tell people to fuck off on occasion in this trade.

I made my switch at 39.  I did a stint in the Army as a medic working at BAMC, so I understand that patient care is no joke.  Sounds like people are about 80 pounds heavier on average than they were in the early nineties.  If you've had enough and want a new direction, which is perfectly understandable, try to balance all the factors.  As people have pointed out, there is a lot of educational/administrative possibility with your current skill set.

We were building the Silver Legacy in Reno and we had a shit ton of Boomers there. At one time we had 250 IronWorkers on the job.

These guys would get paid on Fri and Saturday morning they were borrowing money for the week. I told them they do not build Casinos by losing money. They all told me they had it figured out because they hit a Royal Flush last week.

I did the post tensioning on that job.

Structural hands are just Prima Donnas nothing special.

Tradesmen are bad like that.

I worked with a guy that did the same thing. I picked him each morning and dropped him of each night. Get paid Friday night and Monday morning had no lunch and was buying cigarettes with change.

The more he made in a week the bigger the party was that weekend.

An Ironworker dies and goes to heaven, when he gets there he is confronted by St. Peter. St Peter refuses him entrance.

"Hey, Pete why the Hell can't I come in?"

"Son we already have a crew of five here and they won't leave, in the past month they've drunk up everything they could find, molested  the female angels, they piss  on the walls, they swear all the time, they are always fist fighting,  they smoke too much, and they continually use the Master's name in vain."

The Ironworker tells St Peter, "Don't worry Pete, I'll get rid of them. If I can, will you let me stay?"

St. Pete says, "Yes my son, you may stay if you can convince them to move on."

The Ironworker goes over and talks with them for a few minutes, pretty soon all the other Ironworkers pack up their equipment and leave.
A week later, the one remaining Ironworker is packing up and getting ready to leave.

St Peter approaches him and asks him why is he leaving.

"The Ironworker responds, you know it is kinda boring up here, everyone is so nice, there hasn't been a fight since I've been up here, you don't serve my brand of beer, and everyone complains when I fart."

"Son, you're welcome to stay, but if you have made your decision we can't stop you. But I must know what you told the others to get rid of them."

" Well Pete, I just told them that they were working six 10's down in Hell. Must be true, because they haven't been back."

Somebody mentioned the shitters. Porta-pooter art from a job last year:





I think this guy probably posted earlier in this thread that you shouldn't be an ironworker:


This jewel was about 70' up on a column. WTF

I think you need at least 3 drunk drivings to be an ironworker.

How I got 15 ironworkers fired.

From your mouth to gods ears, those gentlemen get shit done.

I don't get it.

Its a great job....here is my dad in 1969.  He 78 now.  Notice the safety gear

Btw he is one of the finest craftsman Ive ever met.  He retired in his 50s.  Owns a million dollar + house on the coast of maine that he built on land he bought in the late 80s.    3 acres with 12' of water for 90k, yah on the coast of maine.  He built the house himself at the age of 65.  A self made man. He has sailed round cape horn in a 50' at 72 years old.  I'm awful proud of him.  The only people from boston local maine lobsterman would take on and count as a friend, is an iron worker.  Trust me.  They are kindred spirits.  It also did not hurt that he saw a bunch of lobstermen constructing a huge warehouse for their winter storage...for the boats that do get stored for the winter...my dad offered to weld and assemble all the bar joists for nothing.  So at 70+ years he is up there on the beams doing the welding and riveting at NO cost to the fisherman  They a lot a like and they are a rare breed.  He has seen guys fall and fell once himself but his belt caught on a beam and saved him.

The work is extremely well paying

Lol, "Gentlemen"? You're being too kind. But thank you.

I had my pre apprentice orientation last Thursday night. One hopeful applicant raised his hand and asked " will a felony conviction prevent me from joining the union?"  The apprenticeship coordinator answered, "No, a felony conviction used to be a fucking pre-requisite to sign up".

The meeting went very well overall, and I'm excited to get started in the program. There are 30-40 apprentice openings for 150 applicants, and I'm pretty confident I'll get one of the slots. Thanks to all you guys who offered advice and tips. I'll post an update when I find out if I get accepted, in the mean time please feel free to keep the comments coming.

Good luck

Good luck.  Iron workers stink to high heaven, but at least they aren't masons.lol

 

Hey now

I take it you are grumpy, or you are grumpy and you stink.  So which one are you, Mason or ironworker?  Lol jk

 

The erectors always get the glory.

Dad was a rod-buster. Structural reinforcing. All his pretty rebar work is out of view, but we're all glad it's there.