Every union I interacted with in NYC was a borderline scam. Slow, inneficient, overpriced and outright hostile.

> built my house with union labor (union shop) and found the level of competence higher than was typical with jo the random contractor

So you built two homes, one with a well researched union labor group and one with a well researched contractor? Or is this just some BS elaboration based on comparing contractors you hired for small time shit with the big house job?

Excellent epistemic inquiry. I’ve owned homes for over 30 years, and have experience with hiring contractors for remodels. Also hired non-union contractors to do building work on offices over the years. And the company that had a machine shop? One of our channels was home construction and overall I was not impressed with the kind of work I encountered.

But to really get to your question: I started my 3-year home construction odyssey with a non-union contractor who had to be fired due to poor execution. The replacement was a union shop. That’s about as much A/B testing as one can get.

So you had one bad experience building a home with a non-union contractor and extrapolated. Seems sound enough.