The Crew!
Help more women enter and stay in non traditional fields by joining the CREW!
How does being part of the HHW Crew benefit you?
- Network with skilled tradeswomen across Ohio
- Keep informed about news and issues that affect your career and industry
- Be a role model or mentor for women and girls exploring or entering high-skill, high-wage careers
- Learn about upcoming events and receive HHW gear!
If you are already in the field, help yourself by becoming a member of The Crew. For more information or to join, see attached brochure.
Save the Date- upcoming CREW events:
July 9- Jane LaTour, author of Sisters in the Brotherhood, will be coming to Cleveland to talk about what it was like to go first—to be the new female plumber, ironworker, Teamster truck driver or craft worker at the Telephone Company. What is was like learning to labor in a strange workplace culture against a background of harassment, negative expectations and the history of predictions of failure. The talk, followed by a book signing, will take place at Visible Voices in Tremont at 6pm. Click here to see a flyer with more information!
July 10- Hard Hatted Happy Hour with Jane LaTour at Becky's Tavern. Join HHW and Jane LaTour for a casual happy hour at Becky's Tavern (1762 E. 18th Street). Feel free to stop in at any time to meet the author. For more information, contact Vanessa at 216-861-6500 x24 or vlavalle@hardhattedwomen.org.
HHW is excited to have Jane in Cleveland, and to get you as excited as we are- here is an interview with her discussing her career, views on the role of women today, green jobs, and advice for women in the workplace.
Hard Hatted Women: What was your specific inspiration for writing Sisters in the Brotherhoods?
Jane LaTour: While looking through the archival records of the group United Tradeswomen, a young carpenter apprentice asked me: “Why don’t we know about this?” The answer is: tradeswomen need to know their history. Now the book is one more source where women can find their history and learn about the women who went first into skilled blue-collar jobs.
HHW: What’s the most compelling piece of activism you have done? JL: This is a difficult question. Pondering it, it almost seems like choosing between your children. I have loved working on the rank-and-file newspaper, the New York Hard Hat News; organizing a safety and health coalition with railroad workers at Grand Central Station on Metro North; but the work that I have done with and on behalf of tradeswomen has been especially compelling because it has changed my life.
I have learned so much from tradeswomen—their guts at testifying at city hearings on race and gender discrimination in the construction industry—testimony which I worked to coordinate; meeting with and strategizing together over the course of the last 22 years, and seeing the determination, intelligent and creative approaches they bring to their work and their unions. This work has become a calling for me—a cause—and it has been a great honor to be entrusted with the stories that I now share with a broader audience.
HHW: Despite critical policy to protect and assist women in these fields (Affirmative Action, Lilly Ledbetter, and the trial of Wal-mart), life in the work zone seems to be difficult and hostile. What do you think it will take for real change to come about?JL: Occupational sex segregation—excluding women from higher paying jobs—continues to drive gender wage discrimination. Even though sex discrimination—paying women less for the same work—was outlawed in the workplace by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its Title VII provisions, 80 percent of women still work in jobs traditionally held by females. This concentration depresses wages for women.
What’s needed is organizing. Women have the power and the ability to make an incredible contribution to the current state of economic, social and political life. We just need to do the organizational work—and do it on a very large scale. One of the encouraging facts I’ve encountered out on the book tour is the willingness of so many men who now recognize the contributions and strengths of women in the trades and are willing to work together as allies. This is critical and together, I believe real change is possible—not only possible but necessary.
HHW: With our nation’s hopes pinning on green jobs, and green jobs being retooled skilled trades that are historically under-hiring women, what do you think we can do to include women in the green sector?
JL: It’s true that many—most of the fields connected to green jobs are predominantly male. But women working in the skilled blue-collar jobs have jumped on board and are making important contributions. A few snapshots show their involvement: Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. has been involved in a five-year-old coalition, the Apollo Alliance, along with the Oregon AFL-CIO, environmental groups and other labor participants, to develop a blueprint for investment in green jobs.
In New York City, Rebecca Lurie, one of the pioneering carpenters profiled in my book, now with the Consortium for Workers Education, is involved in a similar initiative to create green jobs, working with the Apollo Alliance and Urban Agenda. Margarita Suarez, one of the young women profiled in the book (a member of Local 3 IBEW’s elevator repair mechanics division), has been very involved as an advocate for green initiatives, including training, retrofitting, etc. In Duluth, Minnesota, the Women in Construction Company, made up of more than 50 percent women workers, has moved from training women in better-paying skills into a company committed to environmentally-friendly building and design.
One final example—in a letter to The New York Times, from Kennebunkport, Maine, a woman working as a newly certified residential auditor wrote that, “Many, if not most, of the people I know who have been working for clean energy solutions to global warming are women.” After detailing their various contributions, she concluded with a question: “Rosie the Insulator, anyone?” Once again, organizing, political will, and public awareness go hand in hand.
HHW: Do you have any words of advice or pieces of wisdom for working women (in general)?
JL: Look to your foremothers and know your own history. As pioneering firefighter Brenda Berkman (she’s on the cover of Sisters), talks about, it was knowledge of the struggles of the first generation of female suffragists and the activists of the civil rights movement that provided inspiration and hope for her own struggles on behalf of equality.
For further inspiration, I encourage women to rent some movies, including “The Willmar 8,” director Lee Grant’s documentary about bank workers strike in Willmar, Minnesota; “Norma Rae;” and “Harlan County USA,” Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award winning film that is so timely and highlights the role of Lois Scott as a strike leader. Pick up a copy of Mimi Conway’s “Rise, Gonna’ Rise: A Portrait of a Southern Textile Town,” and read about the transformative power of being a woman and part of a struggle on behalf of workers’ lives.