When You're an Apprentice you have no rights!

Enough time has passed for me to be able to start putting up pictures again.  Looking at this picture, the last one I took working for ATC, I can now comment on it and that last week I worked there.

They had just hired a new Foreman for a section of the building and he didn't like me at all.  To be fair I wasn't a big fan of his either.  Long story short I had to go into this shaft area where there was a straight 15 story drop.  I of course was supposed to be tied off, which I was, but I was also suppose to have someone there at ALL times for safety purposes.   Well guess what?  My new Foreman was my spotter and safety man who was suppose to be there while I was in the shaft.  So I'm in the shaft and I hear him get a call saying he'd be right down.  I was in a position that was pretty awkward and to climb out would have taken 5 or so minutes and he didn't want to wait so I hear this, "I'll be back in a minute."  About 20 minutes later I climbed out having completed the job and went down stairs to the main floor.  The second he saw me he realized he had forgotten all about me in the shaft.  The truth is that if I would have fallen the safety harness would have held me but after a while a person can die due to blood circulation being cut off.  The guy never said a word to me, not even an apology for leaving me there.  After that he tried everything he could to create a hostile work environment and within just a few days he was able to take a disagreement we had about my schedule of sweeping the floors and turned it into something I quit frankly couldn't believe.

When my superintendent handed me my checks and said he was letting me go he made it clear that in that company, ATC, apprentices were a dime a dozen and that whatever a journeyman or foreman says, goes!  Without exception.  There had been a few other times before that day when I'd called my Union Rep with a problem but he did nothing about it so I didn't do anything about being let go.  As I was putting my tools in my truck I did have a great satisfaction knowing that for one, I was being let go because my foreman felt that I'd tell about being in the shaft alone and two I was glad I no longer worked for a company that had a policy where a Foreman or Journeyman's word was taken over mine just because I'm a low life apprentice.