Just a little history from the guy that’s seen this site from the beginning, before it was even called nukeworker.com.
The first three years “NukeWorker.com” existed, we had no sponsors, and accepted no advertising dollars. The sites name is nukeWORKER because it is for the workers. IT’s not nuke jobs, or nuke recruiters, or nuke news, or nuke tourist, or nuke anything else. It’s about the workers. The NUCLEAR workers.
I created this site, as I said, because roadwhore banned my IP address, disallowing me to even visit their website because I asked a question about one of the companies that paid them to post jobs. I had been a computer enthusiast since I was 12 years old, and had experience in old school BBS’s, electronic communities. There was no place we could go and speak our minds. I believe that if a company is doing wrong, we need to let our fellow nuke workers know about it. WE are the only people WE can rely on. WE are the only people that understand what it’s like to be out there.
At the 3 year mark, our server bills were over $650/mo. That was hard for me to pay for out of my own pocket, when I wasn’t making that in a week. So we started allowing companies to pay for job postings and Banner Advertising. Bartlett was the 19th company to sign up as a company on our site to post jobs. Babcock/Isolve was 11th, and EDI was the first. You always remember your first.
The first company to get the “Co-Branding” button ad was SEC, who had it for several years, they used it to advertise their instrument lab. The advertising did well for the lab, but one year they decided to not renew. I sent out an email to all of the companies that sponsor the site, and offered them the spot. The only company to respond was Bartlett. (Sad, I know… you would have thought that more companies would be interested… but they were not.) When SEC had the button ad on the site, people thought SEC owned the site, and with Bartlett’s logo up there, they think Bartlett has some special sway. No advertiser has sway over me, or this site. The sites income generated from Bartlett accounts for less than 5% of the sites total revenue. So I’m not going to jeopardize 95% of our revenue to satisfy 5%. That’s just silly.
The only companies that have ever asked me to remove something, and I complied with, was just about every nuclear plant post 911, they asked me to remove pictures of their plant, until everything could be reviewed by security.
Additionally, I’ve dropped an advertiser because they tried to get me to change something that was said on our site. (A company advertising OSHA training) They said it was hurting their revenue, and that the information on the site was inaccurate. (Our site said you couldn’t get OSHA training online) I dropped them as an advertiser for even asking me to change something. And you know what? They were correct about the information being wrong. It wasn’t about them being right or wrong, it was them threatening to change their advertising spending if I didn’t change what the site said. I saved them the trouble.
I view the website not so much as mine, but ours. It belongs to every nuke worker, I’m just managing it for us the best I can.
I don’t want any censoring on this site at all, and I only want the least amount of corralling as possible.
NPUA won't be treated any differently than any other company or organization. No better, no worse.
I'd like to see NPUA buy a job posting agreement, and a banner ad... And that button ad... Then people could say I was a puppet for the NPUA.
Later, when I have time, I'll write a nice bit about how Bartlett isn't my main employer. As Troy mentioned, 3 of my last 5 jobs were with Shaw, one of Bartlett's competitors (The other 2 with Bartlett ... after-all, I AM a rad guy,and they are the biggest rad company out there... If I want to work rad, why exclude them?)