With face coverings and masks on, more women are training to join the construction trades.

Mary Ann Naylor, communications & marketing director for Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., said demand is high for the organization’s pre-apprenticeship classes, despite cancellations of in-person recruitment events due to the pandemic.

Over the past decade, the percentage of women entering the trades industry has been steadily increasing. In 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 10.3 percent of workers in construction were women.

Organizations such as OTI have served as a workforce pipeline by providing advocacy and training. OTI’s eight-week pre-apprenticeship programs are offered four times a year.

Even now, in a socially distanced world, OTI is continuing its work via a hybrid model. Students take field trips to workshops, but they complete all classroom work remotely through Zoom.

One of OTI’s ongoing initiatives is to get more tradeswomen to the forefront of the industry and thus show other women that they can get their hands dirty.

“Culturally, we started degrading trades jobs 40 years ago,” Naylor said. “Parents didn’t want their kids to go the trades.”

Recruitment of women to join the industry has been a battle on multiple fronts, Naylor said. There’s been a cultural bias against trade jobs as well as the notion that getting one’s hands dirty mean’s one isn’t smart enough, she said.

Meanwhile, women don’t see other women doing the work, Naylor said. She recommended that company officials review their advertisements and online presence to see who’s represented.

OTI typically holds an annual career fair in which tradeswomen work with middle school students, high school students and adults. It’s an important recruitment event, Naylor said, because women can see others doing the work. But the event was cancelled both last year and this year because of the pandemic.

Holding recruitment events amid COVID-19 is challenging, said Bridget Quinn, workforce development coordinator for NECA-IBEW. The most impactful part of informational meetings, she added, is when they become social events and women in the industry give tips and tricks to those interested.

As more women get into the trades, others become increasingly interested, Quinn said. It turns into a word-of-mouth phenomenon where women in the industry begin referring friends, family members and neighbors.

In 2011, women made up 12 percent of NECA-IBEW’s workforce. By 2020, they made up 14.1 percent.

“It’s a lot harder to message to women to what has been traditionally a male occupation,” Quinn said.

OTI centers its programs on prepare women sufficiently for careers in the trades. For instance, students are encouraged to be vocal.

“As women, we’re not socialized to be loud and take up space,” Naylor said. “You need to be loud on construction sites yelling out stuff going on – People have to be able to hear you over the machines.”

OTI also collaborates with Fulcrum Fitness to train pre-apprentices for the profession’s physical demands.

In a typical year, OTI graduates 120 students; however, last year there were just 60 because of the pandemic. The group is looking to create freestanding modules and a pipeline navigation program to increase the number of women entering the industry, Naylor said.

The post Persevering to change a workforce’s face appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Information can be a powerful tool in the right hands. That holds true for the trades, and Portland mason apprentice Kirstie Reeves knows it firsthand.

After suffering abuse from her husband and navigating a bitter divorce, she said, Reeves was looking for ways to support three children and herself.

“I was a housewife,” Reeves, 29, said. “And honestly, baking has always been my passion, so I thought if I ever did go back to work it would be as a baker.”

But Reeves turned to her family for advice, and got a rather surprising answer from her mother: Why not attend the Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. Career Fair? The annual two-day event hosted each spring by Portland-based OTI connects high school students with more than 100 companies and public agencies that employ skilled tradespeople.

“I came with my mom because I was asking, ‘What am I going to do?’” Reeves said. “I’ve got three kids. I was pretty much homeless. I was living on (my family’s) couch and I had to file for all the state assistance.”

So in 2015 Reeves and her mom visited the fair in Northeast Portland and gathered information on a number of possible careers. Instead of the electrical trade, however, it was masonry that caught Reeves’ attention.

“Actually they have a yellow sheet that has information about all the different trades, their incomes, their requirements, what you have to do,” she said. “And so one day I was having coffee and (masonry) was the one that called out to me.”

Reeves ended up enrolling in an International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC) masonry pre-apprenticeship program. Now she is employed by J&S Masonry of Portland.

“I am an 80 percent apprentice,” she said. “I have 2,000 hours or so to go to be a journeyman. It is getting close and I’m happy about that.”

Reeves also volunteered to staff a BAC booth at this year’s career fair – the 26th – at the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Northeast Portland. There, more than 1,700 female students from 75 Oregon high schools attended the Friday session to learn about the many options in skilled trades. Saturday’s session was open to the general public for the same purpose.

On Friday, after helping Evergreen High School student Justice Trujillo apply a layer of mortar in a simulated brick wall, Reeves was all smiles.

“If I had known about this in high school then I never would have wasted my time going to college,” she said. “I’m a high-energy person, and that’s one thing about my trade is that I’m always go, go, go, go.”

Stories like Reeves’ are what OTI Executive Director Kelly Kupcak enjoys most about her job. In her first year at the helm, Kupcak surveyed her first career fair as an OTI employee Friday and said the empowerment granted to young people by knowledge of opportunities available is what makes the organizational work worthwhile.

“We’re really proud of the work we do,” she said. “This is one big event here that exposes young people and adults to opportunities in the skilled trades. And we know not everybody is going to go into those careers, but if you watch the kids, you see that moment where they go from like tentative to ‘Oh my gosh; I just did this thing.’ This moment is how all young people should feel empowered to do whatever they want.”

The event featured hands-on demonstrations by dozens of contractors, public safety agencies and others. There was a simulated water main break run by the Portland Water Bureau, a Bremik Construction carpentry station where students built wooden toolboxes and even a cutting torch station hosted by Iron Workers Local 29.

Students could also try out a Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue fire hose, wire an electrical light with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 48 or learn about heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration with the UA Local 290 Plumbers and Steamfitters.

Crescent Valley High School speech language pathology teacher Megan Postelwait may not be experienced in the trades. But she certainly knows the value of a solid career. That’s why she led a contingent of students to the career fair. Crescent Valley is using Paths 2 the Future grant money from the University of Oregon, she said, to expose girls to traditionally male-dominated professions, including the skilled trades.

“We wanted them to get some hands-on experience,” said Postelwait as she watched her students build toolboxes at the Bremik Construction station. “It’s been good. They’ve had huge smiles climbing ladders, welding and doing things they don’t do in the classroom.”

There is a growing recognition in some circles of the limits of focusing exclusively on a college path for high school students, Postelwait said.

“I think our district is working toward having more diverse exposure educationally and then making sure those are all-inclusive as well,” she said. “We’re going to have some kind of programming next year, and I think that districts are seeing that there is a possible shortage in the trades, so we want to make sure our kids have that exposure.”

Kupcak, a former heavy equipment operator, worked with trade groups Hard-Hatted Women and Chicago Women in Trades before moving to Oregon earlier this year.

“They are powerful stories,” she said. “I talked to a sister today who’s in the (Laborers Local 320) now, and she came to them from being incarcerated formerly, and she told us this career fair changed her life. That gets you right there in the heart.”

Women continue to be underserved in construction and related industries and also have higher rates of poverty than men when heading households, Kupcak said. This makes offering viable living-wage jobs to women more crucial.

“For us, yes, it is about connecting women to these good careers,” she said. “But it’s also about – they have kids, and they need these opportunities to care for their families and be economically self-sufficient; real jobs, with real opportunities for growth, and benefits. It’s really powerful.”

The post OTI shows girls potential construction careers appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Scores of people came out for the Portland City Council meeting this past Wednesday to show their support for two resolutions against fossil fuel exports and oil shipments by train. The council passed a resolution that will oppose increased crude oil shipments by train. A final vote on a resolution that would ban new fossil fuel export facilities in the city is expected to take place Thursday.

Local stakeholders, including members of the building community, are opposing that resolution.

“There’s too many unanswered questions in both resolutions,” said Willy Myers, executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council. “There’s no question that the city needs to come up with a policy dealing with fossil fuels. I’m not sure an all-out ban is the solution. We can’t turn the switch off tomorrow and suddenly go to renewables. We don’t have the infrastructure for it.

“There are several of my members and my affiliate’s members that are reliant upon that industry in some way, shape, or form, to feed their families. By turning that switch off, all of a sudden, you’re creating a much larger affordable housing issue, a much larger wage disparity issue. There’s a way to transition this. An all-out, stop work order is not the way to do it.”

Also, the Oregon-Columbia chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 48 sent a letter to city commissioners denouncing the fossil fuel regulations.

Myers said that if Portland is serious about being green, it should look first to buildings – including those the city owns – and increase their energy efficiency.

The post Fossil fuel resolutions draw opposition appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After attending the previous Women in Trades Career Fair, high school senior Serena Ellison was eager to return this year.

“I love it,” she said. “It makes you feel like you can do anything.”

Ellison, 17, and some of her classmates from Phoenix Charter School in Roseburg were at the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center on Friday to attend the annual fair hosted by Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.

“We’ve done bakes sales, car washes, auctions – a lot around the community – for this,” she said.

The Phoenix Charter School students were among approximately 1,400 Oregon or Southwest Washington middle school or high school students who participated in this year’s event geared to draw more women into construction and other trades. The three-day fair offered hands-on activities and workshops for different age groups. On Thursday, middle school students got a taste of various trades, including carpentry, electrical and ironwork, followed by high school students on Friday. The fair was open to the general public on Saturday.

This year’s fair featured more than 35 active workshops on trades such as roofing, plumbing and welding; many were taught by women working in those trades, said Katie Yablonsky, Building Girls program manager with Oregon Tradeswomen. The aim is to show women and girls the range of career opportunities available to them in the trades, she said.

“Hopefully, they’ll leave feeling really empowered,” Yablonsky said. “This fair is extremely important in exposing girls and women to these careers. These careers are not only high wage; women can be really successful in them.”

Despite this fact, women remain underrepresented in the construction workforce, she said. The event gives young women opportunities to learn about the rewards of a career in the building industry, Yablonsky said.

“Construction is one of the only fields where women are not working on an equitable level,” she said.

Tawny Sayers with the Northwest Laborers-Employers Training Trust Fund apprenticeship program in Kingston, Wash., participated to in the fair to share with the next generation her love of working in the trades.

“We’ve got to spread the word to the young women, and young men, that there are great careers in construction out there,” she said, and “that you don’t have to go to college to make a good living.”

Sayers said she’s glad she discovered the joys of working in construction.

“What I really enjoyed was playing in the mud,” she said. “I got paid good money to do it.”

Ellison said trying her hand at different trades on Friday encouraged her to consider pursuing a construction career.

“I want to go into construction because it’s just really interesting,” she said. “You get more hands-on … I’ve always been kind of interested, and coming here you actually learn how it is.”

Her Phoenix Charter School classmate, Shyla Young, 17, said the fair gave her a whole new perspective on a potential career path.

“At first I was going to do beauty school, but learning about all this makes it seem more fun than beauty school,” she said. “I didn’t think that many girls did the job so it’s really inspiring I can do it too.”

The post Inspiring trades career ambitions appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the Portland area should see more government contracts come their way following approval of a new city ordinance.

The Portland City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved Mayor Charlie Hales‘ proposed ordinance to establish the Commission on Equitable Contracting and Purchasing – a seven-person committee that will provide guidance to the council in an attempt to increase the number of contracts awarded to women-owned and minority-owned businesses.

“Every city, county and state struggles to come up with a meaningful way to support women-owned and minority-owned businesses,” Hales said. “The purpose of this commission is to take a deep dive into what Portland does, and what it could do, to really move the needle on this issue. It shouldn’t just be a nice policy. We should be able to quantify exactly how well – or poorly – we’re doing.”

The ordinance came in response to city findings that indicate “there is historically significant underutilization of minorities and women-owned business(es) as city vendors.” The move also reflects the city’s commitment to increase those numbers.

Hales will nominate up to seven voting members for the commission, and the council will approve or deny each nominee. The voting panel will be made up of minorities and women contractors, as well as stakeholders with experience in diversity contracting. The commission is tasked with reviewing reports and data regarding contracting practices as well as monitoring the utilization of women-owned and minority-owned businesses in city contracting or subcontracting opportunities.

“We like to say, ‘the Great Recession is over, and Portland is booming; yea!’ ” Hales said. “But Portland isn’t booming for everyone. This commission will let us know if we’re truly being inclusive in our government contracting.”

The Portland State University Center to Advance Racial Equity in mid-February published a report outlining the effectiveness of minority contracting initiatives.

The report found that, of the nearly $2 billion in contracts awarded by the state of Oregon in 2013, barely 1 percent of those dollars were awarded to minority-owned or women-owned businesses.

The authors conducted a case study of the Sellwood Bridge replacement project to determine if the general contractor, Slayden-Sundt joint venture, fulfilled its goals of promoting workforce diversity by hiring women and minorities. The case study determined what is being done, and what more could be done, to create equity for minority business owners and workers.

“I applaud the city for creating the commission,” said Connie Ashbrook, executive director of Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. “The commission’s proposed review of reports and data, and then analysis and recommendations, will be extremely valuable on the workforce side to understand where progress has been made and to see where future efforts need to focus to alleviate inequities in our city and bring diverse women and men of color out of poverty and into the middle class through access to the high-wage construction ������������.”

Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. for the last four years has worked with the NECA/IBEW Electrical Training Center to increase their numbers of minority apprentices. Ashbrook said she hopes the commission will produce similar results.

“Our central recommendation is that governments prioritize the creation of a regional system that ensures that minority contracting is as effective as possible,” the PSU report states. “We must ensure that we generate real economic gains for minority-owned businesses, for workers of color, and for their local communities where children are raised.”

The report’s authors – Matt Chorpenning, Ann Curry-Stevens, Greg Schrock and Nathen Lamb – recommend that governments analyze current data, establish targets and create a robust accountability structure for ensuring that ideas are implemented.

“This commission is something the mayor has been thinking about since he got into office,” said Dana Haynes, Hales’ communications officer. “His recent work with the North/Northeast Portland African-American leaders, plus bringing the Black Male Achievement initiative to Portland, galvanized his thinking on this. The PSU study confirmed what he’d been thinking.”

The post Seeking more opportunities for women and minorities appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Of the many positive aspects of working in the electrical construction trade, the ongoing learning opportunities are the most rewarding to me. While the basics of electrical systems, circuitry and theory remain pretty much the same, new technologies, materials and electrical code requirements constantly evolve. Staying up to date with these industry changes requires self-study, enhanced with classroom and on-the-job training.

Since 1929, the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center – NIETC – has been providing education and training to meet this demand. Our students, both journey and apprentice level, attend courses based upon National Electrical Code requirements, product standards and workplace safety. These courses have a direct bearing on their performance of correctly installing and maintaining electrical equipment.

Perhaps stated a different way, the students have to know and apply newly learned concepts or risk undesirable economic consequences – building fires, equipment damage, loss of job, etc.  They understand this relationship, so it is no surprise to find students actively engaged in the learning process when I teach code-based classes. This is a good example of one of Malcolm Knowles’ principles of adult learning: when students understand that they “need to know” the information, they participate in the process. This naturally fosters a positive culture of learning.

Over the last decade, my work responsibilities have been primarily workplace safety and health related, and I cannot say that my student/instructor experience is exactly the same as described above when teaching safety classes. I will admit that making safety-training topics exciting can be challenging. However, it is the responsibility of a good instructor, including employer safety trainers, to illustrate why students need to know that the topic is important and necessary for workers, their employers and the industry.

A common theme within many past Constructing Safety articles has been the evolution and challenges organizations face when trying to strengthen their safety culture. I believe a key component of that mission has to include an evaluation of the culture of learning within the organization. Project managers, field supervisors and general construction workers can have completely different reasons for identifying with, and learning to execute, the strategies identified within upper-management’s safety culture programs.

While employees closer to upper management level positions can have a similar need-to-know learning principle – primarily due to their direct relationship with, and comprehension of, company leaders’ vision of culture change – boots-on-the-ground employees in many cases do not. This can be especially true for workers new to the construction industry, including transitory ones, or those tackling short duration projects.

Sure, they can quickly identify with the importance of a safe workplace for their own health and welfare, and can understand and follow basic safety rules and job-site protocols. However, they unfortunately can be completely disconnected from the time, money and efforts their employers spend to improve an overall company safety culture.

Training organizations like the NIETC are a resource that employers should consider to help educate new workers and motivate experienced workers to learn why change is important – for not only their benefit, but also for the construction industry at large.

Often there is more time in a classroom setting than on a job site, to explain the direct and indirect relationships of workplace injuries and elements of a continuous safety improvement process. In these classes, students tend to be more vocal about workplace safety programs than they might be when speaking directly with their employers. I often hear spirited comments from workers about job-site safety programs in a negative manner.

Examples include:

• We only follow those rules when working at this job site or with that contractor.

• Because someone got injured now we all have to wear more PPE (personal protective equipment).

• I’m not ever reporting any near miss or minor injury. I (or our crew) will get in trouble.

• Accident investigation is just to find someone to blame.

The list could go on, but I think it clearly illustrates that, while not the opinion of all, there is work to be done to enhance the mindset, or culture of learning, of employees like these. Each of those comments is an example of a roadblock for employers trying to manage safety beyond minimum OSHA compliance.

When the focus today is on the benefits of using leading indicators, like near miss / incident reporting and accident investigation for root cause identification and corrective actions to enhance safety performance, negative employee attitudes toward safety is a real concern and can impede progress toward safety success.

Creating a culture of learning can drive results in safety, work quality, and employee retention, as well as support safety culture development.

Barry Moreland is the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center safety director. Contact him at 503-501-5066 or bmoreland@nietc.org. The NIETC is a member of SafeBuild Alliance – a nonprofit organization working to achieve incident-free construction projects through the transformation of workplace cultures. For more information or to join, visit www.safebuildalliance.com.

The post OP-ED: The importance of a culture of learning appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Bridget Quinn isn’t the type to let grass grow under her feet. Instead, she keeps herself busy both on the job and off.

A graduate of the electrical apprentice program offered by the National Electrical Contractors Association and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Quinn holds a general journey-level electrical license. While she previously filled a role as a job steward working through the IBEW hiring hall, she now serves as the workforce development coordinator for the NECA-IBEW Training Center in Portland.

In her current position, she has played a significant role in increasing the number of women and minorities enrolling in classes at the training center.  In addition to tapping into a variety of new ways to find women and minorities, she has created new tool training workshops and weeklong introductions to construction classes.
With an eye toward further honing her ability to continue to find new ways to grow the industry’s future workforce, Quinn is working to obtain a completion certificate from the NJATC National Training Institute at the University of Michigan.

During her free time, Quinn keeps her forward momentum going. She’s an active member of the North Oregon Regional Search and Rescue team, an involvement she shares with her dog Rowan, an Airscent Wilderness Search Dog. Together, Quinn and Rowan invest hours each week in training and classes so that they can be ready if anyone gets lost or goes missing while exploring Oregon’s natural areas.

The post Bridget Quinn, Workforce Development Coordinator, NECA-IBEW appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Sparks flew as Kila Ung etched the word “love” onto a piece of metal.

“I got to weld the letters myself – so fun,” she said. “I like the sparks, and it changed colors, and I liked that.”

Kila, 14, tested her welding skills during Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.‘s 22nd annual Women in Trades Career Fair at the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Portland. The Portland Village School eighth-grader on Thursday was one of more than 600 girls from across Oregon who attended Middle School Girls’ Day.

The three-day fair, geared to draw more women into construction and other trades, offered hands-on activities and workshops for different age groups. On Friday, 629 Oregon high school students got a taste of various trades, including carpentry, electrical and sustainability. The fair was open to the general public on Saturday.

Many schools focus on preparing students for college with little emphasis on alternative career paths, said Connie Ashbrook, executive director of OTI, a Portland-based nonprofit. The fair is intended to bridge that gap.

“There’s not really a venue for especially young girls, young women, to learn about (the trades),” she said.

The best way to show women that they could become a carpenter, welder, electrician or other skilled tradesperson is to let them try it out, Ashbrook said.

“For all of our attendees, the more hands-on the better,” she said. “This is the way that girls and women can experiment with the tools to be successful in the trades.”

This is one reason why some schools have made fair attendance a tradition.

“We have many, many teachers who for many, many years come back with their young women,” Ashbrook said. “You actually get to make something and take it home.”

The opportunity to try carpentry and welding is a big appeal for Kila. After attending last year, she was eager to come back.

“Building a house was really fun,” Kila said. “I would do it as a job.”

Kara Putman, 14, an eighth-grader at Tillamook Junior High School, spent a portion of the fair building a wooden puzzle. She appreciated being able to put school lessons into context.

“I really like math and science, so I thought it would be good to experience this type of thing,” Kara said. “It’s a good experience to find out what I like.”

The hands-on activities were fun, said Sabri Freeman, 14, a Portland Village School eighth-grader. But she also liked meeting tradeswomen and learning from them.

“It’s inspiring to see these women doing jobs that some people think are only meant for men,” she said.

Her eighth-grade classmate, Delaney McEvoy, 14, agreed.

“It’s really empowering,” she said. “I can do this too.”

This is why Sam Batman, the receptionist at Phoenix Charter School in Roseburg, regularly brings a group of high school girls to the fair.

“They leave feeling powerful,” she said. “I bring them because this wasn’t done for me as a kid, and I wish it had been.”

Before becoming a receptionist, Batman was a heavy equipment operator. She started at age 30, but would have entered the construction field sooner if she had been aware of opportunities in high school.

Every year, Phoenix Charter School students hold fundraisers like bake sales and car washes so they can attend the fair.

“They talk about it the whole ride home,” Batman said. “They’re like, ‘I didn’t know this existed, let alone I could do it.’ It just shows them opportunity abounds.”

The post Career fair builds girls’ interest in trades appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.