Your dad is a pipefitter? Cool. I used to work out of Local 572 Plumbers and Pipefitters union out of Nashville, TN. My Dad, a couple of uncles, one brother and several cousins were all members too.

 

Yah, that's how he started out in the workforce back in the mid-60s when he was in his late teens. I should ask him (probably for the 100th time) how he got into that field. He has stories about working in the various chemical plants of the northeast during the late-60s and into the early-80s. He went independent afterwards up until his forced retirement.

 

Worst place I worked was at a DuPont plant. The DuPont employees were very careless and you really had to double check behind them if they said a valve had been locked out and was ready for pipe service. A couple of my union brothers got gassed there. They were lucky as they had room to run. Then, DuPont tried to blame THEM! One of them had sense enough to take a photo of the lockout tag on the valve, and it showed the DuPont employees name that was supposed to lock it out. Problem was, he NEVER shut the valve off before putting the lockout on it! He got terminated. Careless fool could have gotten two good men with families killed.