Repost: Vermont Works for Women Report, "Enough Said"

"Women now provide almost 50% of the nation’s labor – and 36% of an average family’s income. Addressing women’s poverty isn't just a women’s issue – it’s an economic one (Vermont Works for Women)." This need – in our community and among individual women and their families – fuels the Policy Group on Tradeswomen Issues' mission to increase access for women to good-paying careers in the construction trades. The report below explores concerns young women have about their access to education, work, and careers that enable economic self-sufficiency.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Young Women Talk About School, Work, and Becoming Adults:
Why We Should Listen and What We Can Do

Many young women in Vermont describe themselves as ill-equipped and under-prepared for the challenges of school, work, career, economic independence, and adulthood—absolutes that await them in the not-too-distant future. Reflecting upon their educational experiences and job histories in nine listening sessions and in written surveys, two hundred young women, ages 15-25 from Brattleboro to St. Johnsbury, the majority from families of limited financial means, articulated a host of concerns:

• minimal exposure to a broad range of careers and professional female role models
• few personal allies to provide support
• lack of practical skills related to personal finance
• fears around how to live independently
• relational aggression among their peers
• limited expectations for work that taps into talent and passion

While Vermont should be proud of its high school graduation rate – at 91.4% the highest in the country – a number of signs indicate that we have more to do to ensure that the next generation is ready for college and/or work.

Download the summary or the full report, which examines how well we’re preparing young women, who are twice as likely to live in poverty as their male counterparts, to make informed, deliberate choices about education and work and to shoulder the financial responsibilities of adulthood.

For more information, visit vtworksforwomen.org.

Repost: Union Tradeswomen Are Urged to 'Lean In' at Big Gathering

By JT Long in Sacramento

Photo Courtesy of Women Building California and the Nation

Attendees got motivation from AFL-CIO executive Liz Shuler.

A record 650 union tradeswomen attending the annual "Women Building California and the Nation" conference earlier this month were urged to take a cue from top Facebook executive Sheryl Sandburg and "lean in" to become leaders at jobsites, union halls and in their communities.

The Sacramento, Calif., conference, co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Dept. and the California State Building and Construction Trades Council, brought together women electricians, ironworkers, sheet-metal workers, plumbers, bricklayers and other craft workers from across the state, the U.S. and Canada to show solidarity, network and gain insights to boost their numbers and economic clout.

Women currently make up 3% of workers in the building trades, but the popularity of craft-specific networking sessions for pre-apprentices and journeywomen indicated the pipeline was still flowing. "It's a wonderful opportunity for the newbies to chat with those who really do the work," said Debra Chaplan, state council spokeswoman and a member of Teamsters' union Local 853 in San Leandro, Calif. Chaplan credited the recovering economy in part for the record sponsorship of unions from regions that have been absent in recent years. New jobs are coming back in some places faster than in others, she notes.

The dominant message in the workshops, which encouraged attendees to "make the law work for you" and run for union and political office, was that women, including minority women who are underrepresented in the industry, need to self-nominate and get involved. "The more visible you become, the more you hear, the more changes you can make, and the more you can bring others with you," said Jane Templin, interim president of electrical workers' Local 11 in Pasadena, Calif.

Read the remainder of this article at http://ern.construction.com.

© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Apprenticeship Applications Being Accepted, Insulators Local 6 Boston

APPRENTICESHIP APPLICATIONS BEING ACCEPTED

Notice of Non-Discriminatory Policy as to Applicants

PROGRAM: Heat & Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Joint Apprenticeship, Sponsor #20000

AFFILIATION: Heat & Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Union, Local 6 - Insulation Contractors Association of New England

TERRITORIAL JURISDICTION: Mass., Maine, New Hampshire & Rhode Island

TERM OF APPRENTICESHIP: Four (4) years. 150 classroom hours and 1600 job site hours per year.

TRAINING: Related. Learn the types and methods of insulating the various services (hot and cold) that are installed in industrial and commercial installations, power plants, hospitals, pharmaceutical and bio tech facilities. Training will consist of classroom and workshop procedures in the proper use of tools, equipment and application as well as reading construction drawings.

WORK PROCESSES: Assisting journeyman on the job in performing all of the above functions.

MANDATORY ENTRY REQUIREMENTS: Valid, Current Driver’s License and Vehicle

AGE: 18 Years or older by September 1, 2013.

TESTS: General Aptitude Test and Interview; Mandatory Physical and Drug Test.

EDUCATION: High School Diploma or GED required.

RESIDENCY: Territorial jurisdiction of Local Union

APPLICATION FEE: $25.00 Non-refundable fee.

APPLY: In person – During the month of April, 2013 – On Mondays and Wednesdays (Except Mon. 4/15/13) between 10:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M., at 303 Freeport St., Dorchester, MA. Driver’s license, diploma and application fee must be produced at that time. No exceptions.

TELEPHONE: 617-436-4666

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY: Equal Opportunity is provided to all regardless of race, color, creed, sex, national origin or sexual orientation.

Visit http://insulatorslocal6.com/ for more information.

Repost: Wage Gap Persists in Most Occupations, Sales Jobs Worst Paying for Women

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Apr 09, 2013

Washington, DC–According to new analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), women earn less than men in nearly all of the 114 most common occupations. Women’s wages are lower than men’s even in occupations dominated by men and women have the worst earnings compared to men in sales occupations, such as insurance and retail sales.

Occupations dominated by women provide lower earnings: Four of the ten most common occupations for women, ‘maids and housekeeping cleaners, ‘waitresses,’ ‘cashiers and ‘nursing, psychiatric and home health aides,’ have median earnings for a full-time week of work that are insufficient to lift a family of four out of poverty. Women are more than twice as likely as men to work in occupations with poverty wages

“The most common occupations for women show how far women have come, with good earnings in many occupations,” said Dr. Heidi Hartmann, President of IWPR. “But they also show the desperate, and all too common, problem of low pay for many women.”

Women ‘insurance sales agents’ face the largest gender wage gap; women’s median weekly earnings of $641 are only 64.3 percent of men’s median weekly earnings of $1026. ‘Retails sales persons,’ among the twenty largest occupations for both women and men, have an earnings ratio for women of 64.3 percent. Latina women’s median earnings in sales occupations are only 45.5 percent of white men’s earnings, the group with the highest median earnings in all sales occupations.

“Year after year, it is occupations with high commission payments that do worst for women,” said Ariane Hegewisch, IWPR Study Director. “Given lack of pay transparency, we have to rely on lawsuit evidence showing that women are not less likely to work hard in these jobs, but are less likely to be given the higher earning accounts or work in the big buck sales departments.”

The fact sheet is updated annually by IWPR and provides median earnings for the twenty largest occupations for women and men and distributions across occupational groups by gender and race, based on weekly earnings data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Current Population Survey.


The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women and their families, promote public dialogue, and strengthen communities and societies.

View the original press release and contact IWPR at http://www.iwpr.org/.

Repost: At Old Colony, unions prove their worth

After 70 years, the Old Colony housing project in South Boston is getting a fresh start. The aging complex at the rotary where Columbia Road meets Old Colony Avenue has been transformed into 116 attractive new rental units made up of wood-framed townhouse-style homes, a six-story midrise, and a community center. The enhanced view from Dorchester Bay across Joe Moakley Park is only the most visible change in the neighborhood. The second phase of the Boston Housing Authority's master plan is now underway under an innovative project labor agreement that will produce 169 more rental units and, as importantly, offer some of the project's residents a pathway out of poverty.

The master plan is the result of a year-long community process that will ultimately create another 453 units along with the goals for job opportunities for public housing and local low-income residents. The PLA negotiated with Boston's building trades unions incorporates language that exceeds the city's standard hiring goals for residents, minorities, and women by establishing additional employment preferences for Section 3 residents from Old Colonyand the city's other public housing developments.

The project is making use of Building Pathways, a pre-apprenticeship program servicing Greater Boston, as well as other programs that prepare recruits with the soft and hard skills needed to thrive in the challenging world of construction. The PLA's commitment to diversity has already borne fruit. Forty participants have completed the Building Pathways program and are working in the trades. Ten more will be placed in upcoming months and an additional training cycle has been scheduled.

Almost half of the graduates are women; all are low-income Boston residents in search of a career, not just a one-time job. Tyiesha Thompson has lived at Old Colony for 10 years. A 38-year-old single mother of three, Thompson is now a union apprentice working on a high-rise in the Seaport District. As phase two of Old Colony unfolds, she hopes to be part of the renaissance of her home community.

Read the rest of this article at http://bostonglobe.com.

By Mark Erlich, executive secretary-treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters.
(c) The Boston Globe Mar 22, 2013

Repost: 35 years later, women in trades still waiting for fairness

By SUSAN EISENBERG

Thu, Apr. 04, 2013

Thirty-five years ago on April 7, President Jimmy Carter issued federal regulations that opened construction jobs and trade apprenticeships to women. Carter laid out a path that should have led to women holding 25 percent of the construction jobs by now. But we've barely gained a toehold.

Only 1.6 percent of carpenters, 1.8 percent of electricians, 1.3 percent of operating engineers, 2.9 percent of construction laborers and 2.5 percent of the overall trades work force are female, according to the latest reports from the Department of Labor.

Women like myself who entered apprenticeships in 1978 remember the robust recruitment, training and government oversight that made unions and contractors take us seriously. We believed the Department of Labor's "There's a future in it!" posters advertising apprenticeships to women, and we believed the government had our backs.

Then President Ronald Reagan reversed that momentum. His administration cut full-time employees at the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs by one-third and made it known that excluding women from a fair shot at careers in the trades carried little consequence. The effects are still felt today, as the compliance oversight agency operates with half the staffing that it had under Carter.

A woman walking onto a construction jobsite today may find herself time-traveled back to 1963, when it was legal to discriminate in hiring, promotion and layoffs.

It is not uncommon to hear of women who are carpenters or line workers being told on their first day by the foreman, "I will run you off of this job before this week is over."

The stories are remarkably similar across the country.

Tradeswomen have been locked in a porta-potty (or in an electric closet).

They have been "counted" in an apprenticeship program but not given adequate training - or sometimes not even sent out to a job.

Biased evaluations have derailed hard-earned careers.

Unsafe assignments intended to scare women into quitting have led to serious injuries or fatalities.

Tradeswomen have faced sexual assaults and even rapes on the job, and then have been advised to "forget about it" by a training director or business manager.

An industry that depends on the infusion of public dollars, tax breaks and other accommodations needs to practice fair employment, even when the perpetrator of discrimination and abuse is someone's friend or brother-in-law or long-term employee.

Recently, the construction industry has been adding new jobs at an accelerating rate - 150,000 in the past five months.

For women to share in these good jobs, actions need to be taken.

Two-tier training systems need to be combined into one that trains all apprentices for careers. This could be tracked by counting apprentices and journey-level workers as separate occupations.

Project Labor Agreements that ensure prevailing wages for workers need to include funded plans for fair hiring.

Job foremen and union stewards - not the victims - need to be responsible for ending discrimination on job sites.

The 1978 regulations need to be updated to match today's workforce. New regulations, expected two years ago, are now expected in October.

We've been waiting a long time for fairness on the construction site. President Obama, where do you stand?

ABOUT THE WRITER
Susan Eisenberg directs the On Equal Terms Project at Brandeis University's Women's Studies Research Center. Her touring mixed media art installation, "On Equal Terms," will exhibit Sept. 22-Oct. 20 at the Clemente Soto Velez Center in New York City. She wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Readers may write to the author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; email: pmproj@progressive.org; Web site: www.progressive.org. For information on PMP's funding, please visit http://www.progressive.org/pmpabout.html#anchorsupport.

© 2013 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com

Repost: Shiu Dusts off 1980 Goal for Women in Trades

By Anna Halkidis

WeNews correspondent
Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Thirty-plus years have passed. Now the director of federal contract compliance for the Department of Labor is focused on getting U.S. women a 7-percent piece of all skilled trade jobs performed, a goal first set in 1980.

Patricia Shiu at a March event in New York City.

Credit: Anna HalkidisNEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--The main attraction at a recent national tradeswomen's gathering here wasPatricia Shiu, a labor department official in a position to help if more women would just tell her office what's going on.

"We have their backs," Shiu said of affected women. "But we need to hear their voices."

Some at the meeting took the cue and spoke up.

Leah Rambo is director of training at the Nicholas Maldarelli Training Center, in Queens, N.Y., which educates sheet metal workers. She told the crowd that contractors have specifically asked her not to send female workers to their site.

Shiu, as director of federal contract compliance for the U.S. Department of Labor, which legally enforces equal employment opportunities for women, said her office is ready to hear from female workers who feel they have suffered discrimination.

Before President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009, Shiu, a lawyer, spent 26 years working on employment discrimination cases for the Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center in San Francisco.

She came to the gathering of tradeswomen and their advocates, held here in late March, ready to show she understood the common problems that women on construction sites say they face: unwanted attention, being monitored more than male counterparts, receiving menial tasks.

"Women suffer all types of repercussions, harassment and discrimination," Shiu said.

And then there's the problem of women getting few of the jobs under federal contract.

Shiu is adamant about doing something about that. Her goal is to increase the current 2.6 percent of women in trade jobs performed under the federal contracting process to 6.9 percent; a figure promised by the Labor Department in 1980, but never accomplished.

To read the full article, visit http://womensenews.org.

OFCCP Ends Rigid Pay Discrimination Investigation Procedures

Report from Legal Momentum's newsletter on new policy with OFCCP that will improve their ability to fight pay discrimination.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OFCCP Ends Rigid Pay Discrimination Investigation Procedures
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has announced the rescission of Bush-era policies that had been hindering the investigation of pay discrimination claims under Executive Order 11246.  At the same time, Director Patricia Shiu has issued new guidance on how to investigate such claims.  

Legal Momentum advocated for these changes, as the former policies were too rigid and required more than what is required under Title VII principles to establish proof of discrimination.  This rescission and new guidance restores much-needed flexibility for OFCCP investigators to effectively investigate and then rectify compensation discrimination when found.  Eradicating pay discrimination benefits women, their families, and the nation's economy.  For more information about the rescission and the new policy directive, please visit here.

Patricia Shiu of Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Speaks at Summit on Women in Construction

Office of Federal Contract Compliance Director Pat Shiu addressed the crowd at the New York Collaboration for Women in Construction's Working on Equal Terms: A Summit on Women in Construction on Monday, March 8, International Women's Day.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you and good afternoon.

We meet at a critical time in our history, when our economy is recovering from the greatest setback it has faced since the Great Depression. And as we continue on the path to recovery there is much good news to share. Very good news.

OFCCP Director Pat Shiu
opens the Working on 
Equal Terms Summit in 
New York, New York on 
March 18 - Photo by
Joan Roth

For three straight years now, our economy has added private sector jobs every month – that's a total of 6.35 million jobs. Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since just before President Obama took office.

In the last two years, the construction sector has added 306,000 jobs – half of that increase happened in the past five months. And while there is much more we need to do, there is no denying that we are moving in the right direction.

So, when I say that the timing of this gathering is critical, it's because the valve is opening again. Jobs are beginning to flow at an ever-accelerating pace. And, if I may use just one more construction-related pun, it's time to strike while the iron is hot.

The question before us today is: what kind of recovery will this be? Will it be one that simply returns us to where we were before 2008? Will the sort of record-breaking numbers we are seeing on Wall Street right now actually have a positive impact on the lives of most Americans? Will we end up repeating the mistakes that got us into this mess in the first place?

Or, will the sobering experience of the Great Recession finally move us in a new direction, one which prioritizes greater opportunity for all our citizens, a true rising tide that expands and strengthens the middle class?

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, are we, at long last, prepared to do things differently now?

That is the central question before us today. It's why this conversation is so important.

Read Patricia Shiu's full speech at www.dol.gov/ofccp or view pictures from this event.