In summer of 1984 I was doing a co-op semester on a construction job in Miami, just a general flunky pretty much cleaning up, moving stuff around with a front end loader, loading and unloading trucks etc. It was a union job and our company paid the union dues for us and while on that job instead of regular fed minimum of $3.35 an hour I was bumped up to $9.50, I was ready to quit school and do that full time baby!
We had a union tower crane operator on the job that came in every morning w/ a big lunch box full of snacks and lunch, a stack of newspapers and magazines and 2x 1 gallon jugs. He would climb the tower to get in the cab on top of the tower and he had a walkie talkie w/ him. Some days he was busy every minute of every day. Some days he never lifted a finger, just read the newspapers and magazines and pis-sed in his empty gallon jug so he wouldn't have to climb down. Either way either busy or sleeping till he got a call on the radio he was making $100/hour, in 1985! He was the "Cock of the Walk" as far as all of us peons were concerned..........