Over on West Coast in NASSCO shipyard I was placed on a crew for third shift. When I first started there was backstabbing going on with the crew, disrespect and some hatred. I stood my ground and played fair with the lead men who were mostly part of the discontent but I wouldn't let them just get away with saying garbage. Some things I did to bring us together: if I go to tool room to get grinding wheels, tips for the wire feeder, rolls of wire, welding lenses, etc, I always got way more than I needed. I kept them on hand for coworkers and or handed things out that were too much for my tool bag. End of shift, because I am organized and do my tool roundup rapidly I would pitch in and help the laggers. Anyone needs anything I am that man they can depend on. Even the foreman and supervisor who were young and naive learned they could depend on me. I had to tune both of them up one day when they let a safety officer unfairly give me a written reprimand and I wrote reports that went up to the front office and got the reprimand rescinded. Then the game was on. The supervisor for first shift had been scheming to get our crew shit canned or at least broken up and dispersed into other crews. His game was to get his foremen to blame their shoddy work on us. One day they overplayed their hand. The first shift supervisor rubbed out the badge number on a crappy weld in a tight area that was hard to get to and replaced it with my badge number. The white guy (former navy) who had done the subpar work took full responsibility for his bad night in a tight area and his poor weld and came to me and told me of this. He brought me back and showed me. Then we crossed out my badge number and he replaced his own badge number and told me if I needed him, he would be a witness to what he had seen. Same night, end of shift and I am just finishing up a large area I have welded out. Mostly bulkheads to deck fillet welds. Very easy and easy to make look great. My welds have no defects, no spatter, no undercut, no cold roll and are just a tad oversize which is standard. Smooth regular weld beads. I'm happy and pleased. The 1st shift supervisor, (Mo is his name) come up and tells me I left defective welds the night before. Me: "No way dude, that never happened, if so, show me!" I challenged him. He took me on the other side of the bulkhead where there were irregular rough welds, lots of spatter, some cold roll and undercutting. A huge mess and no badge number anywhere. I told him, first off it's not my weld and if it was it would have my badge number. Second, I was there the morning before and saw him setting up his own welder in that area and third, there were nearby welds next to that area that were mine and they were flawless and clearly marked with my badge number. By then I'm on a rant. I've been through this at Akar shipyard and I'm not having it. So he comes over to the side of the bulkhead where I had been welding all night and points out that there is no badge number there either so that's why I get blamed for shoddy work. Now I'm enraged. I haven't finished sweeping up and the night is not even over. Of course I haven't signed off on my work yet as I've yet to inspect it for missed defects like spatter. My foreman hasn't even been by yet to mark it off as cleared for official inspection. I'm screaming at him about all this. He backs off. It was the night after this that I got the unfair reprimands which I had rescinded. I threatened everyone involved with the safety issue and made good by my report in which I named my foreman, my supervisor and the worker who was injured. They made about four huge safety violations which were totally ignored and the first shift safety officer tried to pin it all on me. I had a serious discussion with my foreman and supervisor, the supervisor was a bit peeved I when I pointed out to him that he failed to say a word about the others safety violations and allowed the foreman to fail to send in an accident report. I reassured them both I AM on their side but they must hold up their responsibilities and protect us in every way from ship yard back stabbing games. It's their position that's also being threatened and their crew that will be broken up. They'll be back on their tools. Then at gang box when putting my tools away I report the substitution of badge numbers in front of the first shift supervisor. "And I have witnesses". That got him. He starts spewing praise for me like he wants to be my girlfriend. IN all this, I took note that it was by fostering good camaraderie in our crew that caused them to also come to my defense. In one month our crew went from a bunch of whiney bitches back stabbing and tattling all night to a crew of guys who looked out for each other and began respecting each other. The games stopped and they left our crew alone after that.