The Trade UP!

Women in Trades comes to New Brunswick

Filed under Canada, Women in Trades

Women in Trades and Technology hosted its first New Brunswick networking group event in St. John, yesterday, at the New Brunswick Museum. A number of women in the trades or technology-related jobs attended.

Women are talking up the trades

Filed under Canada, Skilled Trades, Women in Trades

Two ‘women in the skilled trades’ events highlighted the week.

In St. Catherines Ontario (Canada), Marissa McTasney was one of the featured speakers at the Niagara Region’s first skilled trades inspiration session. She had worked in construction until two years ago, when she started her own clothing line, a line of women’s workwear.

“(Women in trades) are setting their hours, their rates. They get to dictate what they’re paid,” she told the small crowd.

“Knowing that you can make a decent income is an attraction. Besides that, it stems from a need, like a single female homeowner who suddenly has a plumbing leak and they want to repair it,” YWCA job developer Graves chimed in.

“There are just so many opportunites,” says McTasney. Her line of womens’ workwear can be found at major retailers including Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Zellers.

Meanwhile in Portland, Oregon, ths year’s Women in Trades Career Fair offered young women hands-on experience and straight-out encouragement. Women as young as 14 took a look at opportunities for women in the skilled trades. “I felt like this was a real opportunity to do something different,” said Mindy Luis. “I’m definitely going to look into trade school as an option, when I graduate from high school.”

“I talked to a firefighter who found out about the trades when she came here 17 years ago,” said Connie Ashbrook, executive director of Oregon Tradeswomen. “She came to one of the first fairs and then became a carpenter.”

Competing in the skilled trades

Filed under Career Advice, Trade Schools, Trades and Culture

This summer’s World Skills Competition in Calgary means that people all over the world are training and otherwise gearing up to compete for gold, silver and bronze.  Canada Skills is holding its national showdown May 20 – 23 in Charlottetown, PEI, approximately 100 days ahead of the ‘Olympics of skilled trades.’ For agenda, logistics and registration information visit the Canadian Skills Competition at www.skills2009.ca.

Meanwhile, in Charleston, West Virginia, they are competing just for the fun of it.  Mike Finlayson is one of a number of apprentices competing in the West Virginia State Pipe Trades annual apprenticeship contest at the Civic Center. Says Finlayson, “I went to Carver Career Center, did well there, got into this and never looked back.”

The competitions allow apprentices and experienced tradesmen to network, learn from each other and about each other. Jim Cartwright, a veteran, says that apprenticeships offer “a great opportunity for young men and women. They go in at fifty percent, thirteen dollars an hour. And, in five years, they double that to twenty six. Great health care and pension. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I love it.”

Missouri Women in Trades wins grant

Filed under Grants, Women in Trades

Missouri Women In Trades, an organization that empowers women through careers in the construction trades recently received the $25,000 Daughters of Charity Foundation of St. Louis award. Congratulations, MWIT!

Prejudices against trades and career schools persist

Filed under Career Advice, Trade Schools, Trades Training Programs

Prejudices persist against tech training and trade schools, say critics of some recent moves by Michigan lawmakers. Read more.

More jobs and more respect for women in skilled trades

Filed under Canada, Career Advice, Women in Trades

The province of New Brunswick is stepping up efforts to get women involved in the skilled trades as it adds new development projects and suffers – as do so many areas – from a lack of skilled tradespeople. In 2006, the province invested $4 1/2 million in a project that introduced women on social services to skilled trade work in New Brunswick.  But now it needs even more help as it plans major projects such as a proposed energy corridor with the state of Maine, announced last week, that would see renewable electricity and natural gas exported from Atlantic Canada to the New England states.

Rosella Melanson, Executive Director of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women  says, “There have been very few efforts to get women into non-traditional jobs in the province.”

Other projects in the province include the possible construction of a 500 to 600- megawatt power plant, a 1,200 to 1,500-megawatt transmission line and the addition of an unspecified amount of wind power. All the growth provides an opportunity for both women and smart employers. Says Melanson, “Smart employers will think of women because they are an untapped pool.”

Pat Darrah is the Executive Director of the Saint John Construction Association. He says that the opportunity is always there for women: “We have a number of ladies working out at Point Lepreau and we got a number of ladies working on the maintenance side of the industry and on the industrial side.’ The govenment’s employment initiative has helped, as there are more now and in 2006 there were no women.

Irving Oil is holding a “Women in Trades” networking dinner in May that is part of that company’s intitiative to attract more women.

Elsewhere, women in the workforce are finding that they are getting more respect – slowly – over time. At a celebration of the 30th anniversary of its local chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, a New York contractor noted how in the early days, many clients treated her “like a secretary.” For women, it may be harder to get respect but they have made great strides, say chapter members, by putting knowledge first.

Kate Beach, an office manager at a fabricating plant called Atlantis Equipment Corp., says, “You just have to know your stuff. You gain that respect the first time you have
someone saying ‘She knows that?’”

While repect for women in construction has ridden the same wave as respect for women in society in general, there are still issues with compensation in New York’s construction trades. “There is not equal compensation,” said Lisa Harding of Lash Contracting in Latham. “In terms of pay, there is a long way to go.”

That same issue haunts New Brunswick’s construction industry: “What is often forgotten is preparing the workplace so that those women are tolerated and welcomed,” Melanson says. “We have seen so many women train for something and then not continue in that line of work because they’ve been harassed from day one or made to be pioneers, and they just move on. It’s a waste of dollars, a waste of talent and we end up with skill shortages.”

But no matter what kind of work anyone faces, there are going to be challenges and problems and ups and downs. Melanson adds, “if you’re a woman looking for a better paying job, going for something non-traditional is probably the way to go.”

In spite of a dire economy, many look forward to growth in the skilled trades

Filed under Canada, Career Advice, Skilled Trades

It’s popular to speak of “these dire times” (or whatever) and fall in line with all the news of economic worries. There are many positive stories, in the skilled trades no less which have proven just as vulnerable as professional employment with financial insitutions. Maybe you just have to read between the lines.

We heard of a program in Canada instituted by Beverley Oda, Minister of International Cooperation. The government of Canada launched a new Skills for Employment initiative that will help developing countries build a skilled workforce necessary for economic growth. The initiative will strengthen local training institutions in partnership with Canadian community colleges and enable students to acquire the quality vocational and technical skills needed for productive employment.<Read more>

Hundreds show up to News 10NBC career fair  says the report from MSNBC . But one staffing agency scouting out potential candidates for new hires was disappointed. They “had a need for skilled trades people but they weren’t seeing them at this career fair.”<See the original article>

There’s an employment problem across Canada’s north. I said “employment problem”: not enough people to employ in skilled trades across a spectrum of high paying industries including mining, forestry and the oil industry. <Read this editorial from Timmins>.

The average wage for oil patch workers is over $75,000 per year (source: www.1-oil-job.com/). The median wage in forestry is $46, 316and for a mining engineer, it’s $87,000 (source: salary.com). Search tradeschoolworld.com for more skilled trades wage information.

NYC program puts woman in the skilled trades

Filed under Women in Trades

Marge Keller is a New York City woman who has graduated from Non-traditional Employment for Women, a program that helps women in that city get into the construction trade.  Along with a new career, she is also a member of IBEW Local 3. Says Keller, the program has “really showed me that I can do a lot of things I didn’t know I could do before. It gave me the chance to earn a lot more money.” She also praises the union as “a good thing” that allows workers in the construction trade “to get good pay and good benefits.”

Skilled trades going strong

Filed under Canada, Career Advice, Skilled Trades

In spite of the supposedly weakened economy, a number of skilled trades in Canada are doing just fine, thanks.

More here

Washington Women in Trades Career Fair

Filed under Women in Trades

Mark the date on your calendar: Friday, March 27.

At the Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion, all women trade school students, women in the trades and anyone else who has any interest can participate in hands-on activities and network with recruiters and employers with apprenticeship programs.

Learn more: http://www.wawomenintrades.com/