There is a big difference between this story, and your first example of a
plant being shut down all day because someone changed a light bulb. And
understandable too, when you start allowing any employee access to
electrical panels (even for something as simple as resetting a breaker)
you
are treading on dangerous ground with not the union but with your
workmans
comp carrier, the company safety policy and probably OSHA as well. Let an
employee open an electrical panel, and you better be paying the
electricians
WC rate on that employee and he had better have been trained on the
precautions and hazards of doing so cause if some non electrician dummy
sticks his hand in there and gets a big zap, the employer is guilty of WC
fraud. And probably an OSHA violation. And, the claim won't be paid. And
the
employee can sue. Sometimes there are reasons for seemingly stupid rules
and
policies that employees don't understand. A bit off the topic but true.

That sounds like typical union rhetoric.
What if the light bulb could only be reached by a ladder? Does that
make it a union job because an untrained worker could fall off the
ladder?

It has absolutely nothing to do with a union, the workmans comp system
doesn't give two hoots as to weather a company is union or not. Neither does
OSHA.
To use your example of a light bulb that can only be reached by ladder,
speaking for my little company, I would have to do it myself or have someone
other than my office manager do it because we have her classified as"
clerical " and pay the present clerical WC rate of .24% , these
classifications are pretty well defined and clerical employees don't work
from ladders. So, I change out the bulb, while paying 12.21% WC in a
classification that indeed is expected to work at heights, in excavations
and around and over water. Nothing union about it, your tax dollars at work.
She also can't drive to a job site to bring me drawings (or coffee or
anything else) without going from the clerical to the gas and oil pipeline
welder classification. So I pay the same rate on her then as I do on a
welder making a hot tie in on a 42" natural gas main line!
This isn't rhetoric, this is reality to those of us trying to run a little
business and employ a few folks. And it has nothing to do with union or non.

JTMcC.