Did I ever tell my union story from the Beaver Valley in PA? Was looking at a cement plant, doing an audit for a customer that sent liquid hazardous waste there to be incinerated in the kiln.
They had a clay pit and a limestone quarry right there on-site providing the raw materials for cement. There wasn't much going on in the plant, not a lot of activity related to cement-making. Just a custodial crew.
We saw a big ocean going freighter docked at their pier so I asked what it was hauling. The answer was "clinker," the intermediary in cement manufacturing that's produced when you heat the raw materials in the kiln, but before processing. Looks like dirt clods.
They were shipping these dirt clods over from Spain because it was cheaper to do that than to process the raw materials right there on-site. When I asked how that could be, the answer I got was: "see that guy over there pushing the broom? He's union and he gets $XXX/hr."
I forget what the amount was, but the message was clear.
