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Carpenters active in United Tradeswomen continued to pitch ideas to the union leadership on how to smooth the path for female carpenters and boost their retention rates - to no avail. Yet outside official union channels they found numerous ways to act on the ideas that the union rejected. They held workshops to orient women to the union - its bylaws, benefits, history and contracts; and on strategies to get steady work. They sent out surveys to find out what was happening on the job sites, documented discrimination, and participated in a campaign to get women hired onto construction jobs at the Javitz Convention Center. The meeting advertised in the above flyer led to the first demonstration by tradeswomen in the country later that summer - in Times Square, where they would hand out flyers that read:
Construction Boom A Bust for N.Y.C women. United Tradeswomen and supporters are here today (in the first demonstration of its kind) to demand construction jobs for women. Most of the city's thousands of construction sites have no women, and only a few have even a handful - mere tokenism. Yet this situation goes on, while increased government attacks on affirmative action are eliminating women's right to earn a decent living at jobs of our choice. The jobs are there - these are boom times for builders. A whopping 72 office buildings alone are slated to be built in NYC in the next 3 or 4 years. Women are being left out-especially women of color. … |
