Sorry Sun Dog, but that will be a reduction in pay. It is now $41/hr and $172/day, plus no travel caps. And union dues where generally only about $100 for the entire outage, which got you about $3500 in perks on a standard outage ( I figured it out).
Can see the hourly going down (don't know about $35/ hr, seems high for a contract job), but you do need the diem rate and no travel cap. Area expenses keeps going up. Rental rates went up 12% in a year.
The administrators of the program said that it cost about the same, just that the techs got more money. Think the union didn't want to deal with it anymore.
I know things change, just sad to see it happen.