I've been an electrician for 21 years. I spent my last two years of high school splitting time with Vocational School for Industrial Electricity, so when I graduated it was actually graduating two schools at the same time. Took my WV Journeyman's License and I went to work about a month after finishing school for some really crappy employers and made peanuts for a good straight 4 years.
Then I actually joined the United Steelworkers as an electrician for about a year ( figure that one out on how that works because I still don't know lol). It didn't work out due to a big dispute against another equally crappy company. So I ended up going back to my previous employer, reluctantly but for double the pay I got when I left. Dealt with that BS for another 6 years before lucking up with an opportunity to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers LU 466.
Unfortunately, I entered at a time when things were changing and all my prior work experience didn't matter ( 11 years), so instead of "ticketing in" ( immediately becoming a full time Journeyman Worker-1), I had to enter the Apprenticeship for the next 5 years. Basically it meant paying for additional schooling every Saturday and starting off at a percentage of full scale pay, increasing as I progressed.
But, I made it through (actually winning the Outstanding Apprentice Award in 2017 in the end lol) and finally became a full time Journeyman Worker-1 ( even though I held a Journeyman License for 11 years prior and during the 5 years of Apprenticeship, you still aren't recognized as a JW-1 until completion of the program).
These days, I mostly am a lone wolf and get stuck building and remodeling the crappy jobs nobody else wants ( aka Poop Plants like my buddy
@CoyotesGator here!) but also Hospitals ( like my buddy
@C-Grin here too) Government Buildings and Medical Marijuana Laboratories. Think about that for a second: go from a place where they dump sewage to a sterile hospital or a lab where they grow weed, to a Sheriff's Department. Real fun explaining where you just came from and raising red flags all the time lmao