yah well the union in chicago is in trouble, residential is about dead, union builders have told the union to go fuck themselves, so thousands of residential guys have tried in vain to switch over to commercial and or industrial, but theres not enough work to go around. Will county local 174 a very strong local s.w. of chicago last year ran special scaffold classes to help the res. guys try and find work, they have a nuclear plant and a few refineries and chemical plants in their area  that use scaffolders every year. So for me I cant find a lousy 40 hour a week union job to save my life, carpentry or scaffold. I have had 3 jobs in 2010  2 workin 7-12's and 1 workin 6-12's all out of state, all non-union, my last was scaffold up in alaska where they like you to work 6 weeks straight no time off then let you go home for 2 weeks, paid about $2800 a week and they kept us in 'man" camps, housed and fed us. I am planning on going to wolf creek nuclear in kansas end of jan. for 3 months of scaffold work, b4 i go I intend to switch my union card out of chicago and into hammond. indiana local 599 they are a hiring hall and have b.p. amoco refinery that is doing like a 6 billion $ expansion union I hear they already have over 100 builders there. otherwise i have applied to other companys up in alaska for upcoming scaffold jobs. Happy to share info with ya if ya like.

---mike