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For Fifth Year, California Women Meet to Network, Tell Personal Triumphs
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The Fifth Annual Conference of “Women Building and Protecting California” got off to a rousing start Saturday morning, June 10, as conference coordinator Debra Chaplan recognized women who have been in the building trades or the fire service since the 1970s.
An increasing number of women stood up as each decade was called out. The largest group – women who are now apprentices – shouted and clapped as they were heralded as the wave of the future for women who are building and protecting California.
Sean McGarvey, Secretary-Treasurer of the National Building Trades Department, AFL-CIO, challenged the women and men at the conference to recruit young women into the trades by informing them of the opportunities for a productive career. He also welcomed the firefighters in attendance, calling them “our first cousins.”
He noted that between 1983 and 2000, there was growth in the number of both journeymen and apprentices in the building trades. But between 2000 and 2004, the number of women decreased.
“I won’t say that (those numbers) correspond with the term of George W. Bush, but…”, McGarvey said.
Over the next six years, McGarvey said, one million more skilled craftspeople will be needed in the United States. And during that same period, between one million and 1.5 million skilled craftspeople are scheduled to retire.
“The amount of work (over that period) is staggering. Big employers and contractors tell me they need skilled craftspeople,” he said.
McGarvey said that the Committee for Women in the Trades in the National Building Trades Department is working hard to recruit more women in the trades. He added that he works daily with “strong women” in the Building Trades Department in Washington, D.C.
In the opening session, Beth Youhn, Executive Director of Tradeswomen, Inc., also discussed her organization’s efforts to promote recruitment retention and leadership development for women in the building trades. TWI was primarily responsible for setting the conference agenda.
Personal Triumphs: Mom and Daughter
While many think of construction as a career passed from father to son, during the first day’s plenary session, a mother-daughter team of electricians from IBEW Local 595 told their personal story of struggle and triumph in the trades.
Laurie Madden, a member of Local 595 for 15 years, is an Inside Wireman Journeyperson. As a divorced, single mother of a daughter, she said she decided to “learn a trade. I jumped in blindly, and I was tested many times.” Over the years, she recounted, she learned her trade from mostly male journeymen, “some nice, some not so friendly.”
Madden said she would never forget her first day on the job as an apprentice. “The foreman gave me the keys to his truck and told me to deliver conduit to all 15 floors. It took me all day long, but I got it done,” she said. “Afterward, he told me I passed the first test.”
Now, her daughter, Tracy Maloon, has completed her first year as an apprentice electrician. Maloon addressed the conference, saying to the mostly female audience that “we can’t afford to be naïve. Sometimes your foreman can be downright rude and disgusting. But for every jerk, at least 10 people will help me out.”
Maloon said there “is always a member of the older generation” of journeymen who is willing to show off their skills…” and an apprentice can learn from them. “I say, bring it on,” Maloon said.
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Messages from Women Elected Officials
On the second day of the conference, the attendees saw a short video of encouragement for the tradeswomen and firefighters by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-California.
“You are the ones who build our homes, our schools and our hospitals,” Boxer said. “You are the ones who protect us. You are the ones who stand up for family and medical leave and retirement security.”
State Senator Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, who is a candidate for Secretary of State, spoke to the conference, noting that women in the trades and fire service are breaking new ground. She said when she was in high school, she wasn’t allowed to take a drafting class because she was a girl. And no boys could take a cooking class, she said.
Bowen, who carried legislation that expanded the use of the Internet to inform the public about the activities of the California Legislature, said that she hoped that a woman would one day be Assembly Speaker and President Pro Tem of the Senate. She encouraged the women to run for public office, and concluded with this admonition: “Don’t keep your mouth shut when something’s wrong.”
Leadership Workshops
During the two-day conference, members of the building trades and fire service, as well as various employers and mentoring programs conducted workshops on a wide-ranging variety of subjects that dealt with strategies for recruiting more women into these fields, enabling women to stay in these careers, and promote their leadership abilities on the job and in their unions.
Subjects that were covered in those workshops include: Surviving & thriving in apprenticeship; Election 2006: What’s at stake; Wall Street and you: Investing 101; ABCs of applying for apprenticeship; Speed mentoring; Becoming a union contractor; What about your retirement: Your pension; Tools for recruiting women to construction; and Blueprint reading for the novice and the nervous.
The conference concluded with a meeting of the Tradeswomen Policy Council. The council is a group of working tradeswomen who develop policy recommendations, including legislation, to promote the recruitment, retention and advancement of women in the trades in California. Delegates are elected in caucus meetings to represent each of the trades on the council.
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