Constructing equality

A state bill could make the building trades fairer for women

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

After several years of work, the new Suffolk County Courthouse is in its final stages of construction. Within the stone and brick exterior, tradesmen are hard at work installing finished walls, sprinklers, ceilings, and carpeting.

Construction workers have been lining up for assignments on the state-funded project, and Susan Cramner hoped to be one of them. When the union carpenter heard who was already working there, however, her hopes dropped. Out of 60 dry wallers on the site, none are women. In fact, says the 17-year veteran, there is only one woman on the entire site.

"I've been loafing for a few weeks, which is much longer than I'm used to," says Cramner, a mother of three who lives in the South End. "Right now, contractors can do whatever they want as far as who they hire, and there is no protection for women."

Over the past 20 years, several programs have prodded contractors on government-funded construction projects to hire women, but Massachusetts construction sites are still overwhelmingly dominated by men. That may change if the state legislature passes a bill, now pending in the House Ways and Means Committee, that would require contractors to hire a standard percentage of female workers for each job funded with state money.

Though no monitoring system is in place, there are good reasons to suspect that Massachusetts women are being discriminated against in the construction industry. In 1997, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2.7 percent of construction workers nationwide were women. In Massachusetts, only 0.8 percent of construction jobs are held by women.

A study conducted in 1990 by the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) found that "members of these groups [minorities and women] have at times suffered systemic discrimination both in private and public sector contracting." A June 1994 study by the City of Boston, the Boston Housing Authority, and the Boston Water and Sewer Commission found that "most of the witnesses attributed these problems [women failing to be hired for construction work] to overt or covert discrimination." Two other studies have reached similar conclusions.

That kind of problem is what the so-called Close the Gap bill is designed to address. The first part of the bill calls for a study that would track the number of female workers on state-funded construction projects. The second part mandates a system of goals under which each state-funded job would hire a still-undetermined number of women.

Similar regulations already exist on the city and federal levels, but there are no rules governing state-funded jobs. The state set up a system in 1975 to set goals for hiring minority construction workers and contracting with minority- and woman-owned businesses, says Roni Thaler, former executive director of the Boston Tradeswomen's Network, but so few women worked in construction back then that the category of female construction workers wasn't regulated. "That was before women were really a presence in the field of construction," says Thaler, who coauthored the bill with Senator Bill Keating (D-Sharon). "Today, the substantial number of women who choose to work in the trades calls for a review of current practices in construction. With more women training to enter construction, there is a need to ensure that they find work once they are trained."

The issue of equal employment for women in nontraditional jobs came to the forefront during the Carter administration, when the US Department of Labor set goals for hiring women on federally funded construction jobs nationwide. This 1978 measure was the beginning of affirmative action for women seeking job opportunities as bricklayers, carpenters, electricians, painters, sheet-metal workers, and the like. The regulations dictated that 6.9 percent of workers on federally funded construction projects be minorities and 6.9 percent be women. Similar goals were set for contracting with minority- and female-owned businesses.

The City of Boston followed suit, with rules that 10 percent of the work force on city-funded jobs must be female and 10 percent must be minority. And in 1984, Massachusetts created the Minority Business Enterprise Program, which established state goals that matched the city's. In January 1989, however, the US Supreme Court ruled that evidence of a pattern of discrimination was necessary before state and local agencies could set hiring quotas.

Because of that ruling, the House Ways and Means Committee initially held off on the Close the Gap bill, even though the legislation had passed the Senate unanimously in March of this year. The bill has since been amended to cite evidence from the four studies conducted by state and local agencies during the 1990s, and to call for the completion of a more formal state study. The hiring goals will be based on the results of that study.

Although many local labor unions are in favor of the bill, there is some opposition among contractors. According to Joe Dart, executive director of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council, state-funded jobs account for about 50 percent of all construction work available right now. Private contractors who bid on and win those jobs complain that they are already overregulated.

"There is a very long list of contractors who bid on state-funded jobs, and the general feeling among those contractors is that they want to do the job their way, without the government breathing down their necks," says Dart, whose council deals with legislation that will affect the building trades. "But the industry has evolved from 20 years ago, when female construction workers were rare, and the laws have to reflect that."

Debbie Williams says she remembers what it was like back then. Since she began working in construction two decades ago, Williams has achieved several milestones in the field. At the age of 18, she became the first female union painter in Boston and the first woman to work as a painter on the Tobin Bridge.

Still, she says her 21-year career might have been a little easier had a law been in place when she started out. Williams, a 38-year-old mother of three, was one of just five girls in her graduating class at Boston Trade High School. She postponed her career for a year and a half because she didn't know how to break into the male-dominated field.

"I could never have accomplished what I did if it wasn't for affirmative action," says the Quincy resident, who is now the first female foreman in her department at the MBTA. "I may have been a token back then, but there are too many women now who are skilled in a trade and want to work in the field. This bill is just one more way of showing that."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.