[This was originally a comment left by La Lubu on an earlier post; I’m “promoting” the comment to be its own post. –Amp]
“Preference.” Interesting word. Some people around here think that women simply prefer to not take tradeswork into consideration. But there’s more here than meets the eye.
When I entered the trades, the usual working hours were 8AM-4:30PM M-F. That has slowly morphed into 7AM-3:30PM, M-F; and some areas it’s 7AM-5:30PM, M-Th. And yeah, this has had an effect on the number of women who can consider going into construction.
I live in a city of 120,000 people, which by Internet standards is a very small town. By Illinois standards, it’s a decent size city. There is one child-care facility (three locations) that opens before 7AM. Just one. That facility, and a couple of others, are the only ones open after 6PM (most facilities require you to pick up your child before 5:30PM). There is only one child-care facility open on Saturday. There are no child-care facilities open on Sunday. None.
What this means, is that single women, or women with husbands that work difficult hours, or on the road, or who are in the military, or whatever, are unable to choose this line of work. “Flex-time” is not an option in my field. There have been cases of contractors adjusting the hours for male journeymen whose wives do shift-work, and thus had to take their kids to the SCOPE program (before and afterschool care within the public school system; the hours don’t begin until 7:30AM), but no contractor has ever made the adjustment for apprentices (male or female) because apprentices need supervision by journeymen (translation? someone would have to be paid overtime).
Single women have always been the largest group of women interested in tradeswork, and the largest group who’ve stayed. But not without a scramble. I’ve seen women drop out of the apprenticeship program because try as they might, they couldn’t solve the child-care scramble. For a while, my solution was to have my retired mother be my child-care provider. Now my mother is terminal, and that is no longer an option. I’ve been using the one child-care facility that opens before 7AM. They don’t accept kids older than seven. What will I do when my daughter turns eight? I don’t know yet.
The trades have had a difficult time retaining skilled women. A common scenario is a woman who has been in ten-fifteen years starts taking night classes and gets a degree, then gets out of the trades. Why? Well, because contractors aren’t promoting us to foreman’s positions; we get scads of opportunities to work for (white) male foremen younger than our old t-shirts (not much of an exaggeration, unfortunately). If you aren’t a foreman by the time you’re forty, your earning potential will plummet. There is plenty of documented eveidence of age discrimination in the construction field. The Labor Paper in Peoria had an article about it; unfortunately it is not available online.
We are also laid off first. I’m not kidding about the “but the men really need the job” attitude. Check out a book by Susan Eisenberg (a journeyman wireman) called “We’ll Call You If We Need You“. It’s an in-depth account of the struggles facing women in construction. See also another book by Victoria King (another journeyman wireman) entitled “Manhandled: Black Females”. It delves into racism as well as sexism in the trades, but Ms. King, like Ms. Eisenberg, still advocates for women entering the trades. Both were single mothers. Neither still works in the trades (I believe Susan Eisenberg is teaching now; Victoria King is an attorney).
Most of us who came into the trades and stayed come from a less-privileged background, so it takes a while for us to…not notice the discrepancies, we notice them right off the bat!…..but to assign them a value. Once we start comparing what our pension statements look like in comparison with our brothers, and how often we are laid off in comparison….we start looking for alternatives. That, and most women have to wait until their kids get older (and can watch themselves) before taking night classes. Some tradeswomen find their alternative in Civil Service positions. Some aim for administrative positions in their Local, or in their International. And some just get out, with most telling other women not to bother.
Not me. I still think this is an excellent way for women to make a living. It’s the best alternative if college is too costly an option for you. But job hours incompatible with child care options is a barrier. A huge barrier.
I’ve been lucky. For one thing, I had my child at an extremely advanced age by Illinois standards…32. And I’ve already attained journeyman status, and know a lot of the ins-and-outs. I can try to negotiate “flexible hours”, if need be (and file a grievance if the contractor in question provided that benefit to male journeymen, but won’t for me). My journeyman status also means I have the option of applying for Civil Service positions. I came into the trades during a decent economy, and so haven’t had a long-term layoff until recently. When work gets slow, faces on the job get more white and more male. Call it discrimination (because it is), or if the D-word makes you uncomfortable, call it the “halo effect”. There is a reason white male apprentices have an easy time finding mentors, and get invited out for after-work extracurriculars. There is a reason white male journeymen have an greater chance of staying when work gets slow. Hey, who wants to lay off a buddy? But the folks you don’t know so well? (That’s why I always advise female and apprentices of color to get seriously involved in the Local, in the labor community, and in political activities sponsored by the labor community…..it’s about the only way to jump-start a real professional relationship with one’s co-workers, that is anywhere near being on-par with what the white guys naturally fall into).
Hey, what’s life without the Struggle, right? But that doesn’t mean we have to fall into the “three monkeys” routine and act like all “choices” are equal, or even that they are really choices.
La Lubu, I know this is a side issue to the main point of your post, but I wonder if you have any thoughts as to why there is only one extended hour childcare facility in the whole town. I know it’s not the most profitable industry in the world, but you’d think with a population that size, there’d be a sufficient demand for such services.
La Lubu, I know this is a side issue to the main point of your post, but I wonder if you have any thoughts as to why there is only one extended hour childcare facility in the whole town. I know it’s not the most profitable industry in the world, but you’d think with a population that size, there’d be a sufficient demand for such services.
I can’t help thinking that this should be union issues, but I don’t really know how efficient the unions are in these fields in the US.
djw, there used to be more than one, but there never was very many. There are probably several reasons for this.
If I’m not careful, I could easily segue into a rant on the various Big Social Problems of My Fair City, so I’m gonna try to stay on point here! ;-)
1.) This city, and its commuting-from-the-smaller-towns workers, are roughly composed of two populations: those who, like me, originally came from somewhere else, and folks who not only grew up here, but so did their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. This city is provincial in the extreme; I’ve been here almost twenty years, and am still viewed in many circles as a newcomer.
2.) People like me, who come here from somewhere else, don’t often stay. There is a sizable transient, or temporary population here, which makes it hard to organize around building livable institutions (like child care). The largest employers around here have a built-in transient workforce: State government, insurance agencies, the hospitals, the schools and universities. There used to be manufacturing here. That is long gone. Like many areas of the Rust Belt, we are in economic transition; that is a fancy way of saying the old jobs and institutions (both brick-and-mortar and cultural) are crumbling or gone, and the new institutions or arrangements have not taken their place. Child care was handled in the past by a combination of family pitching in (including older siblings), latchkey arrangements, and creative use of shift-changes (between married parents, or between friends). Except for the hospitals, the shift-work is gone. Service industry work has oddball hours that don’t necessarily correspond to traditional shifts (and traditional hours of child care facilities). Loss of jobs keeps people on the move; some leave here, some come here—arrangements for child care made between friends and neighbors are always on a shaky basis as job instability makes this so. And latchkey kids are officially illegal by state law, until the age of thirteen.
3.) White Flight. This is the elephant in the room that no one seems to want to talk about. The decimation of the tax base is a huge problem; for the school district, for the park district, for social institutions. Traditional midwestern social institutions like the YMCA, YWCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, etc., are feeling the pinch. For a good explanation of this dynamic, see Thomas Shapiro’s “The Hidden Cost of Being African American”. I could rant for days on this. Shapiro is more concise.
4.) Anti-feminist backlash. The United States has always overdosed on “individualism”, preferring to see every individual’s challenges as a personal issue, completely unrelated to any societal trends. One way this manifests is the refusal to see child care as a societal problem; just an individual problem. An individual woman’s problem. There is a hostile attitude towards women that amounts to “hey! we gave you girls the right to abortion! Why didn’t ‘cha have one!”
5.) Economic breakdown translates into community breakdown. Loss of blue-collar work translates into culture clash, as more blue collar people have to seek work in white collar institutions—with the inherent different assumptions about How Life Works, including how children are raised.
LaLubu, I have a lot of respect for any woman who can make it as a journeyman. I have done a lot of “male” labor too, although mine was mostly unskilled. While it’s true that SOME women just don’t want to do the dirty, physical work, it is also true that there’s a lot of discrimination in these jobs. A woman definitely has to prove herself much more, because the assumption automatically is that you can’t work as well as the men.
Or that you won’t stay. Contractors will make the argument “why should we take her in (to the apprenticeship program)? She’s just gonna get pregnant and quit!” or “she’ll never be able to handle it.” Then the self-fulfilling prophecy will take effect, as the institutional structures that are currently unquestioned and unchallenged continue to remain so.
Some things have gotten better in my Local. When I came in, the JATC (apprenticeship committee) was composed primarily of men who did not think women belonged in the trade, period. I was put to work with individuals who were viewed as the biggest assholes my Local had to offer, and doing the nastiest, roughest work available. The JATC hoped that I would quit. Ha! My hourly pay went from $3.50/hr to $5.56/hr from the moment I signed on! I was rich!! I’d’a left fingernail imprints in the concrete if you’d tried to drag me away!
And interestingly enough, I got along well with everyone that was supposed to be such a difficult asshole. They were crusty, don’t get me wrong, but they did respect hard work, no matter who it was coming from. Their work ethic was phenomenal, and they gave credit where it was due.
I found myself spending some of the time reading your post trying to figure out where in Illinois you’re at, even though its fairly obvious you don’t want to tell. I guess that’s what happens when you hear a familiar place (I’m in Chicago). :-)
My sister was working over-night shifts, and trying to find child care for her 15 month old just completely bombed. Even in this city of the huge population she couldn’t find somewhere she was comfortable with leaving her baby overnight (most that offered it that she found and could afford were not in the nicest of neighborhoods. not that she found many.). She ended up finding a new job rather than continue to buck the child care situation. Its really a shame that more options aren’t open to women for child care, even in such a high-population area. And don’t get me started on what she’s paying for it, even now, with subsidies from the state. Its like anyone with odd hours or not making a lot without family to watch their kids for them is totally screwed. (By the way, it actually worked out that she found a much better, if lower paying, daytime job…but it is still a terrible thing that she couldn’t find child care)