On this forum I read a few threads where guys claimed to sit in the halls for months trying to get their foot in the industry after graduation. In the below link about MM&P a frequent commenter who is a supporter of MM&P advises to live close to a hall to get on with them. In that thread you also bring up the fact the people who work for the union hall aren’t the best people to ask for help because it isn’t in their best to help everyone & only members of the club. I’m not going to argue “what ifs?” but in my opinion I don’t think working for a Fourchon, Houma or New Orleans based union would be that fun. The bayou/GoM companies would probably insist a union office be local & it would obviously be local residents who worked the Union office because nobody is moving there. The east & west coasts have crony unions & it could be expected the bayou/GoM guys would have the same.
Also, someone mentioned that the '15 oil crunch was probably the best chance for AFL/CIO to expand their business model into the GoM which might be true but the GoM guys I knows who stayed employed aren’t union type guys. The ones who might of been inclined to unionize were laid off pretty quick I guess? Also, non-union companies probably didn’t lay off by seniority but on merit, employee profitability & other factors. Mariners who made the cut were just happy to have a job & were worried that their companies were going to go belly up with some doing just that. IMO, a bunch of Cajun union crony middle men wouldn’t made anything any better except maybe for a select few Cajun croney union members in '15 in the GoM. Working in the GoM was bad enough for me. If I had to go through an additional layer of coonasses at a union hall to get a paycheck I wouldn’t of bothered. I sure the hell wouldn’t of stayed in a trailer on stilts bayou union hall all day praying for a job.