by Snyder, Sarah. Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) [Boston, Mass] 25 Nov 1986: 17.
Marie Barron, mother of two, makes $450 a week after taxes as a union carpenter. She used to be a telephone operator. It took having five brothers who are carpenters and a special federal program, eight years ago, to convince her to go into construction.
Boston city officials feel too many women miss out on high- paying construction jobs because they are brought up knowing nothing about them.
To correct that, the city is renewing a program killed for lack of funding five years ago called Women in the Building Trades. Women who want to learn about construction can go to a lecture on the different building trades, then take a free six-week course, two evenings a week and Saturdays, as preparation for a union apprenticeship. The first workshop, at the Women's Technical Institute on Boylston street, is Dec. 13.
Women hold an estimated 3 to 4 percent of the 13,000 construction jobs now in Boston. Union membership is about 5 percent; the Plumbers Union Local 12, for example, has eight female journeymen out of about 700 members. Local 103 of the Electrical Workers Union union has 62 women among 2,500 members.
Kristin McCormack, director of the Mayor's Office of Jobs and Community Services, said the new program will give women better access to "some of the best-paying jobs in Boston."
Some 100 women are expected to attend the program, with perhaps 30 going on to union membership.
The city is funding the program, sponsored by the Women's Technical Institute and Network of Women in the Trades, with $120,000 a year in federal community development block grants.
Susan Brophy, who headed the program for three years until its federal CETA funding was yanked in 1981, said it sent about 300 women statewide went into the building trades and was "enormously" successful. Women need an introduction to construction work that men do not, she said, "because of the way people grow up. Young men get used to using tools and doing those kinds of tasks with their fathers. It's not that women aren't capable, but . . .it was an industry that was unfamiliar to women."
Women electricians and carpenters at a press conference yesterday said they believe many women now working for the minimum wage of $3.55 an hour as clerks or cashiers would do well in the far higher- paying building trades.
"I went in knowing nothing," said Barron, the former telephone operator. "There is no certain skill you need first. The worst parts are getting up at 5:30 to start at 7, and the elements. But it's great in the summer; you're out at 3. In January and February, I usually go to the islands."
Construction workers typically lose 10 weeks of work a year because of weather. A journeyman plumber earns $19.75 an hour; Jill Feblowitz, one of the founders of Women in the Building Trades, earns $19.95 an hour as an electrician.
Between 1985 and 1986, the number of minorities working on major construction projects in Boston inceased from 5 to 16 percent, while the number of women rose only from 2 to 3 percent. Feblowitz thinks those relatively low numbers are due to "the traditional sex stereotype all of us grow up with -- I know I never thought I would be an electrician. Then there are information barriers, and no old boys' network. We hope this program fills those voids."
Attending the program does not guarantee a woman a union apprenticeship, but Boston Building Trades president Leo Purcell said, chances look "real good" for a woman who has gone through the program.
Sara Driscoll, an electrician with Local 103 who works from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. running pipe through ditches and installing fire alarm systems, said part of the reason there are few women in the unions is that some who begin an apprenticeship discover they simply don't like the work.
"They realize it is filthy, dangerous and hard," Driscoll said. Harassment by male workers, she said, "can be a problem, but it's not a major one." She praised her union's effort to recruit women in the past few years. For her first four years, until 1982, she never worked with another woman.
Flynn praised Boston's trade unions yesterday for their "progressive and cooperative leadership" in backing the women's program.
Copyright Boston Globe Newspaper Nov 25, 1986
Snyder, Sarah. "Women Now Looking to New Jobs in Construction." Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext): 17. Boston Globe; Massachusetts Newsstand; ProQuest Central. Nov 25 1986. Web. 13 Jan. 2012 .
