if we do such low level comments then let me speculate it was not the union at fault but the developers, they used node.js and 1000 buggy and bad coded libraries.
To be fair, highway/road construction is notorious for being an industry where the .gov and the unions bloat things in order to make more easy money for each other.
Tropes about one guy working and four supervising or tearing up recent work just to fix something you didn't fix while you were at it don't persist because the industry is a shining beacon of economic efficiency, they persist because they're universal enough to be relatable.
Or it could be also that we the web devs have no clue why some engineer that needs to know to read plans and maps is always needed when some guys need to dig. Mistakes happen with this engineers supervising (cables and pipes get cut or damaged) I imagine without them there will always be more problems.
if we do such low level comments then let me speculate it was not the union at fault but the developers, they used node.js and 1000 buggy and bad coded libraries.