Unfortunately there is a union for what I do... its the IBEW or whatever electrical workers union exists. In Washington, once a person is licensed as an 01 (electrician)journeyman or administrator, he/she is the master of all other subclasses; one of which is 06 (low voltage). Spending three years pulling romex and passing your test (please don't get me wrong in assuming that I think the test is not hard, I know it is) automatically qualifies you as an electrician, AV person, security guy, satellite dude or whatever you want to profess yourself to be as long as it relates to running wires.
That is why these guys get pissed when they see someone pulling speaker cabling, coax, data, etc. Even though the State has numerous subclasses, the problem lies in making the electrician the master of all. I think if you tell someone that he/she can now do it all, they will relay that to a customer. We have ALL seen jobs that have been botched by someone who got in over their head and just faked it.
Washington recently went into a licensing frenzy that required all of us who had been doing low voltage wiring as General Contractors or with a business license (or even with no license at all), to become certified, bonded, insurance carrying low voltage contractors. Their original intent was to put us all out of business by giving us NO credit for anything we had ever done and requiring us to work for 4000 hours before being allowed to take a test to certify our competancy. This, of course, was driven by the Unions wishing that all of this work would go to their own... even though most of their workers and supervisors had no real clue what it was about. Thankfully, the Dept. of Labor and Industries listened to our combined voices and allowed us a window of time to take the tests to become low voltage administrators and journeymen. Beware of this kind of thing coming to your own states and be prepared to make your voice heard when it does or you won't like the end result. Massachusetts was the one who tried to make AV companies hire a Union electrician to sit around and supervise all jobs. This was shot down with the help of CEDIA but revisions are on the draft table as we type.
Think of the companies that this extra overhead would push right over the edge. If these guys get their way, think of the backward steps our industry would take as large Union electrical houses take over the work and learn it by trial and error. Eventually, I see peaceful coexistence and a lot more cross-training as more electricians move toward the path of becoming systems integrators. For now though, it is something we should all keep a watch on.
