You're listening to the oil and gas this week podcast with Mark LeCore and Paige Wilson.

This is the show for busy oil pros who quickly want to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.

You're listening to the Oil and Gas This Week podcast brought to you by IBM.

This is the show for busy oil pros who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.

Thanks for joining us for episode 228.

How's it going, Mark?

Well, consider we had to bar the doors in the window so we could record in peace. It's going to be good. Oh, yeah, my dog. Sorry. But you know what else is going on page? It's more like what isn't going on. Do you know what we have coming up very soon? Our live event. Our live event called Here and Now. It's Thursday, February 18th, so by the time you hear this, you probably have just an hour or two to sign up before it's sold out. It's our celebration of our $1 million download for Walling Gas This Week. Can you believe page that this show has been downloaded over a million times? Yeah, I actually can. It took a couple years, but. Well, you know, for any podcast, that's a lot. And for something as niche as we are, it's literally a world record. So we're so happy, audience, that you stuck with us all this time. But we're also announcing our new shows. We're a thank and salute our sponsors. We have a secret announcement that page, you know what that is, but don't say anything. Well, yeah. And part of our proceeds as usual go to fight human sex trafficking, so come help us fund the fight. The link will be in the show notes. So if you want to go, we have 80 seats available here in Houston. It's $50 a seat, but like I said, that money's going to fight human sex trafficking. And if you can't or don't want to show up in person, join the live stream. It's going to be a blast. It's going to be fun. We're doing stuff that's out of the box for us. And we got a whole bunch of cool announcements and new stuff coming. So go check it out, peeps. And it looks like we got a review. Yeah, it's a five star. It's love the show. Unions. Hey, Mark and Paige, given the news, please talk broadly on what you see as positives and negatives regarding the unions in the energy sector, upstream, midstream, downstream. Keep up the good work. Jeremiah from Siemens. Actually, I think it's his last thing. He looks like he says he's former SLB, so big blue. So even though it was not a question for First Friday Q&A, just real quick, let's talk

about this.

So in the U.S., labor laws are pretty mature.

And unions actually were the basis of that.

Unions formed when workers had no rights and big companies basically misuse their workers.

Unions were formed to give the workers leverage, which worked.

And it was not always

fun in games for the unions. There's a lot of strife, a lot of pushback, a lot of political

pushback, financial pushback, physical conflicts. But here in the U.S., we have labor laws now.

So for me, especially in the craft labor parts, so the pipe fitters, machinous welders, those unions don't serve as big

advantages they used to, and they also take a cut of employees pay. Now, at the same time, they also

help protect employees, like if there's a temporary layoff or a strike or something. But for me,

I think the advantages of unions, especially in craft labor in the U.S., probably

are nil.

It's time. I think we've kind of outgrown them. Now, the rest of the world is a different story, once again, because the lack of labor laws. When you start getting into unions that are very niched, electrical unions, telecom, that sort of stuff, all that stuff really is antiquated. And please, if you're a union member, I'm not saying that there's something wrong with your union.

I'm just saying that my personal beliefs are that they no longer, the benefit is about equal to the cost. So I just don't think it serves the greater good like they used to in the U.S. They served a greater good for a very long time. To Jeremiah, I'm personally not a big fan of unions here in the U.S. and actually not in Europe either, but in the rest of the world, they definitely serve their

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