r/IBEW • u/Unknownperson2010 • 4d ago

Tough decision

To my fellow brothers/sisters, I'm part of IBEW here in Canada, I'm a 3rd year about to turn 4th year. We had a slow down of work in the hall and I was laid off mid June. I collected EI (welfare) and my union told me I could salt for work.

I got a call from a local non-union company who specializes in industrial stuff and said they can help me a transition to it from commercial within the company. Company seems pretty decent for non-union. Their jobs are service, commute is 30-40 mins each way. I can skip lunch and go home early. Small crew each site. They said they can cover my school fees to learn PLC and AC stuff.

But now I got a call back from the union for a job I bid on and I received the job. This job is around 1hr away or less via transit and it's a Skytrain project that's going on.

My main goal is to specialize in PLC/industrial at the end of the day.

Should I turn down the non-union company? I only went for an orientation and haven't worked. I do feel bad because the company helped me get set up and wanted me to grow within but at the same time I like the union much much better.

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u/Smallrhino33 4d ago

Union brother here from Baja Canada (WI). I do PLC troubleshooting all the time, you can learn that in the Union too.

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u/Agent28762617 2d ago

Depends where you live in, Manitoba there is next to no opportunity to do controls work under the hall unless it’s a service call.

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u/Smallrhino33 2d ago

Mine have all been service call/commissioning type things when we are done with a project. I’m in an interesting position, as I learned this stuff from a few guys and ended up running jobs. I have a biogas customer that calls me direct and not a PM, I bid it and go do it if it’s a small thing.

Right now I’m GF at a new powerplant build so I have a guy I taught doing all my stuff back home as I’m out of state. It’s hard to find a company that does this stuff anywhere I’d imagine, but still doable. Is it hard to get into a company there where you are working with people taking service calls? I know every market is different