Posts by Mary Ann
Healthy Communities Coalition: Broadway Corridor Project
Oregon Tradeswomen is committed to ensuring women, people of color, low-income communities, and other historically disenfranchised groups benefit in publicly funded projects through access to quality job training, support services, job placement support and high-wage careers.
As part of our public policy and advocacy work, Oregon Tradeswomen endorses the Metropolitan Alliance for Workforce Equity (MAWE) Community Benefits Agreement model as a policy framework for ensuring access, opportunity, and equity on all publicly funded projects, including the Broadway Corridor Project.
We are working in coalition as a member of the Healthy Communities Coalition (HCC) – a group of 20+ organizations negotiating a legally-binding Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with Prosper Portland, Continuum Partners, and the City of Portland on the Broadway Corridor redevelopment in downtown Portland. HCC wants to ensure that the City of Portland and Prosper Portland support standard-setting new benefits to advance good jobs, affordable housing, and equity for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and working class communities.
The Broadway Corridor is 34 acres that connects or includes landmarks and neighborhoods such as Old Town Chinatown, the Pearl District, Union Station, the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the U.S. Post Office, which will be demolished as part of redevelopment. Historically, the Broadway Corridor has been the home for communities of color who have been forcibly displaced over the past century as a result of “the effects of racialized policies, practices, and decision-making.”
The Broadway Corridor is on the land that has been home for Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Mollala and many other tribes. Black Americans, many of them porters who arrived from Union Station, lived in, created and supported Black-owned hotels and other businesses in the early 20th century. It was once the home of to Japanese Americans until the U.S. government’s internment order in 1942 that forced these Portlanders to leave their homes and businesses.
This August, the billion dollar development is almost able to move forward after an agreement was reached on the adoption of a development deal as well as a CBA. This consensus guarantees prevailing wages, full-family health care benefits, and the significant inclusion of minority-owned contractors throughout the construction process. In addition to these terms benefiting workers, goals for 100 percent renewable energy to achieve carbon neutrality have also been included.
As the Broadway Corridor Project is in motion, the Portland Housing Bureau committed to reaching out to Black, Japanese-American, and Chinese-Americans (groups who have historically resided in these neighborhoods) offering affordable housing. This effort underscores the integrity of this project, clearly distinguishing it from previous urban developments which have dislocated minority groups.
To oversee the agreed-upon goals, a 10-member committee appointed by HCC and Prosper Portland will be monitor progress on the project – the Broadway Corridor
Oregon Tradeswomen’s Workforce Equity Manager, Jay Richmond, commented on this historic project, noting, “The successful agreement for a CBA on the Broadway Corridor represents a sea change in the way development will be done in the region going forward. We’ve made sure there is meaningful investment in creating a pipeline of opportunity for women, people of color, and working families to enter into the trades. We secured 720 units of affordable housing, family wage jobs, and small business opportunities, as well as construction hiring goals which will have huge positive impacts for BIPOC communities. That said, we know this work has just begun, and look forward to making sure these goals are met through the ongoing oversight of the BCCOC.”
While we are celebrating this positive step, the hard work isn’t over. The Portland City Council must still review and accept the agreements, and the Broadway Corridor master plan is currently under review by the Portland Design Commission. Ultimately, we are hopeful the success of these negotiations will serve as the model for future projects to intentionally bring benefits to the communities where these construction projects happen.
Dean’s Car Care: Giving Back
Oregon Tradeswomen is excited to introduce you to Dean’s Car Care and their community giving program!
Dean’s Car Care is a local car care business with an equal mix of male and female auto service professionals and they work with an underlying philosophy of education, empowerment, and community!
One of Dean’s Car Care service advisers, Harriet Hargrave, nominated Oregon Tradeswomen during a community organization presentation, and we’re thrilled to have been selected as one of four awesome organizations customers can choose to give back to when they complete their service at the shop.
“Congratulations on the great work you all are doing, we are excited to be able to support your efforts! Your organization received votes from every member of our team after Harriett lead a brief discussion on how if we want to see more women in the industry, supporting organizations like Oregon Tradeswomen is a practical step. Additionally, some of our favorite customers are graduates of your programs and have been great advocates.
—
With Appreciation,
The Dean’s Team
This program runs through June 2020, so please check them out for your next maintenance service – or if you hear a weird noise from under your hood!
Hammer and a Helping Hand
Oregon Tradeswomen rang in the New Year setting up our new home in the Rockwood neighborhood, a feat accomplished with the help of our generous supporters. To say thank you, we are shining a light on some of our business partners who made this move possible. Starting with our friends at Hammer & Hand, a local general contractor started by two Reed College graduates, Sam Hagerman and Daniel Thomas, who began their carpentry careers by remodeling historic Portland homes. Hammer & Hand has since expanded to include new home-building, commercial construction, handmade windows and doors, and executing traditional and modern designs created by the Pacific Northwest’s top architectural firms.
Because the founders developed their skills as carpenters through remodeling beautiful historic buildings, they are guided by an ethic of quality, durability, and beauty in all of their projects. Hammer & Hand has made a name for themself as a national leader in high-performance and quality-assured durability having authored two editions of their Best Practices Manual, a compendium of their field-tested construction details, many informed by their experience in high-performance passive building. A third edition of this guidebook is slated for this summer.
Hammer & Hand is a company of carpenters, and they don’t operate like a typical single-source “design-build” firm. Instead, their process involves partnering with an independent architect and getting the design team, the general contractor, and client together in a dynamic collaborative process that ensures a well-rounded approach to the project to satisfy budget, aesthetics, and buildability. Hammer & Hand’s goal is to makes each clients’ dreams a reality while building to last.
Their commitment to great work doesn’t end here. Hammer & Hand is dedicated to empowering their employees. Because of their commitment to workforce happiness, Hammer & Hand sees very little employee turnover and has team members who have been with the company for a long time, including career carpenters who have celebrated 15 and 20 year anniversaries over the past few years. Hammer & Hand is also committed to workplace diversity and actively hires women – including a few Oregon Tradeswomen graduates!
Hammer & Hand demonstrates their commitment to Oregon Tradeswomen’s mission not only by giving our graduates an exceptional place to grow in their careers as carpenters, but they made an incredibly generous donation to helping us acquire a training space of our own. Oregon Tradeswomen’s new headquarters in Rockwood, complete with classroom and workshop, allows us the capacity to expand our training to serve more women in more ways. We are grateful for Hammer & Hand’s investment in our growth as an organization and we look forward to the bright future we are building together.
Welcome Leah Rambo to the National Taskforce on Tradeswomen’s Issues
The National Taskforce on Tradeswomen’s Issues recently announced that Leah Rambo is now serving as the new Co-Chair of the National Taskforce on Tradeswomen’s issues.
Leah began her career as a sheet metal worker in 1988 and after working 10 years in the field, she was appointed as a full-time instructor, becoming the first woman to hold this position. She continues to hold the position of Director of Training for SMART Local 28, where her primary responsibility is training Local 28’s 521 apprentices and 2,300 Journey and Light Commercial workers!
Leah currently serves on the New York City Department of Education’s Career and Technical Education Advisory Council and Gender Equity Committee and is the Co-Chair of the NYC Coalition for Women in Construction. Leah holds a BA in Labor Education and several trade certifications.
To learn more about Leah Rambo and her journey into the trades, watch this video interview with Leah published last year!
A Gift From 99 Girlfriends
Representatives of the 5 Non-Profit Winners of 99 Girlfriend’s Impact Grants!
We at Oregon Tradeswomen are big fans of stories that start with a couple of friends and a bold idea. In 30 years, Oregon Tradeswomen has grown from small support group meetings in a basement to a dynamic nonprofit. Today, Oregon Tradeswomen offers hands-on training, job placement, supportive services, and advocacy for women, trans, and gender-diverse people seeking fulfilling, living-wage careers in the skilled trades. We’ve experienced first-hand the power of coming together to create meaningful change in our community.
In 2017, a few friends here in Portland had a similar idea; what if, instead of each of them making many donations to Portland’s nonprofits, they pooled their resources in order to make a significant impact? The result was Ninety-Nine Girlfriends, a women’s giving circle currently comprised of 480 members. This model of one person asking a friend to join her and pitch in, to use her resources to lift others up, is very near to our hearts! In its first year, Ninety-Nine Girlfriends made one $100,000 grant to a Portland nonprofit. In 2019, they were able to offer five such awards, one in each of their focus areas:
- Arts & Culture
- Education & Lifelong Learning
- Environment & Sustainability
- Family & Human Services
- Health & Wellness.
Oregon Tradeswomen is honored to be a 2019 recipient of Ninety-Nine Girlfriend’s Impact Grant. This transformational gift will go a long way in helping Oregon Tradeswomen achieve our long-time goal of expanding training options with evening and weekend classes once we are settled in our new location and training workshop in early 2020. We want to thank each and every one of the 480 Girlfriends for their support and generosity.
Oregon Tradeswomen is especially grateful to Vanessa Vasquez, Isis Harris, and Heather Mayther, who shared their stories during the application and review process.
Thank you, Ninety-Nine Girlfriends, for your support and generosity, and to all our funders and individual donors who have supported us this year.
To find out more information about 99 Girlfriends and their 2019 Grantee Partner winners, please visit their website here!
Happy Holidays,
Oregon Tradeswomen
Tradeswomen Leadership Institute 2019
On December 7, 2019, Oregon Tradeswomen held our annual Tradeswomen Leadership Institute (TLI) at the Sheet Metal Institute here in Portland, Oregon. The event drew more than 50 participants from a diverse spectrum of trades! We were thrilled to see such a successful showing of trade workers from our community and across our industry.
The event was organized in part by an advisory committee of tradeswomen who shared ideas and insights which informed the workshop content, including topics such as Surviving and Thriving in the Trades and Advancing Your Career from the Jobsite into Management. Workshops also provided resources on how to access financial supports and plan for retirement, as well as how to politically advocate for yourself and other tradeswomen.
Our Keynote speaker, Sonia Ramirez, Wage and Hour Administrator for the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, wrapped up the day with a passionate speech about her professional journey, and her path to leadership as a woman of color in a male dominated industry. Sonia inspired the whole room! We were also surprised and delighted to see Oregon Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle, who stopped by to show her support for the event as well.
Oregon Tradeswomen wants to thank the TLI Advisory Committee for their wisdom, enthusiasm, and superb ideas which made TLI 2019 so successful and well attended. Special thanks to the Sheet Metal Training Center Local 16 for hosting us for the day. We extend our gratitude to the speakers who shared their valuable time and advice with us, as well as our dedicated community partners and staff who helped make the event a success.
Check out photos from the event on Facebook!
We look forward to seeing you in 2020!
Metro Adopts The Construction Career Pathways Framework
In 2018, Metro regional government released a labor market study for the construction industry and the potential economic impact for our region’s workforce. Greater Portland is growing and the construction industry is growing with it. There is an anticipated need for 15,000 new construction jobs in the next 10 years at a time when 20 percent of the region’s workforce is nearing retirement age.
While construction has historically had a male-dominated and racially homogenous workforce, our industry is changing due to intentional efforts such as those spearheaded by Metro’s Construction Careers Pathways Project (also known as C2P2). As industry continues to report a continued shortage of skilled workforce talent, there is an opportunity to tap into existing resources to increase the number of women and people of color that make up a skilled, qualified and diverse workforce pipeline.
Through Metro’s initiative in bringing together public owners to build a regional model of diversity, equity, and inclusion in construction contracting, procurement, and workforce, we have an opportunity to create a shared prosperity model. Construction is one of the few industries still offers a family-sustaining career, with wages averaging $35 per hour and full benefits. Through access to good careers with good wages and benefits, we can create financial stability for our regional workforce, which can be life changing.
Diversifying the construction workforce not only directly addresses the labor shortage; it directly addresses issues of poverty and economic mobility within communities of color and working families in the region. Nationally, women make up only three percent of the skilled trades in the construction industry, and people of color make up nineteen percent nationwide. In Oregon, women comprise just under eight percent of the skilled trades, with minorities accounting for twenty percent statewide in the industry.
Without a pathway to financial independence and stability, women can become limited in their choices, in their personal safety, and in their long-term health and well-being. Lack of access to well-paid job opportunities is one reason poverty rates for women are substantially higher than those for men—here in Oregon, almost a third of households headed by single women live below the self-sufficiency standard according to the 2017 report, Count Her In, by the Women’s Foundation of Oregon. For women of color in Oregon, the situation is even direr as 86% of Black and Latino female-headed households with children do not have sufficient income to meet their basic needs.
The report notes that improving educational outcomes for Oregon’s women will not solve this problem as the earnings gap for women actually widens with more educational attainment. Because Oregon’s female workforce is concentrated in low-wage occupations, in fact 60% of all minimum wage workers in Oregon are women, connecting women to construction careers can mean economic stability for a significant percentage of our families.
This is why Oregon Tradeswomen joined with a host of other organizations across the region in support of Metro’s C2P2 model, working with public agencies, labor unions, workforce development organizations, and contractors, to leverage capital investments to grow and diversify the region’s workforce. By recruiting and supporting women and people of color in the skilled trades, we strengthen our construction workforce for decades to come while at the same time, creating needed financial stability for families and communities through this shared prosperity model.
As we make progress toward these shared goals, our region’s economy will be stronger and more equitable.
Wire a Light 2020 Dates Announcement
Would you like to learn about the possibilities a career as an electrician offers? The NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center is hosting SIX “Wire a Light” workshops for women who have an interest in the electrical trades. During this free workshop, you can learn how to wire a light, meet women electricians in the industry, and find out how to start your career as an electrician.
Dates & Registration:
February 6, 2020
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Register for the 2/6 workshop
April 2, 2020
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Register for the 4/2 workshop
June 4, 2020
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Register for the 6/4 workshop
August 10, 2020
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Register for the 8/10 workshop
October 1, 2020
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Register for the 10/1 workshop
December 3, 2020
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Register for the 12/3 workshop
Location:
NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center
16021 NE Airport Way
Bus Lines:
NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center is accessible via TriMet bus lines 74 and 87.
Do Good With the Give!Guide
Oregon Tradeswomen works nonstop to educate and empower women in achieving financial independence by pursuing careers in the skilled trades, while at the same time diversifying the industry. For the good work we do in the community and in the lives of hundreds of women and families, we were one of the local nonprofit organizations selected to participate in the Willamette Week Give!Guide again in 2019! The Give!Guide is a citywide fundraising campaign supporting 152 non-profit organizations, which also aims to inspire the habit of end of year giving among those under age 36.
The Give!Guide makes giving fun! Each week there will be a designated Big Give Day where your donation of $10 or more on that day enters you in a drawing to win something big! On some of the Big Give Days, donors under the age of 36 have twice the chance of winning!
The Big Give Days:
November 1
Give: $10 or more
You Get: A $500 shopping spree to Powell’s Books
If You’re 35 or Under: You have twice the chance of winning, as a second gift card will be given to one donor under the age of 36!
November 7
Give: $10 or more
You Get: New snow gear from Patagonia [$600 value], a two-night stay at Five Pine Lodge and four single-day lift tickets to Mt. Bachelor!
November 14
Give: $10 or more
You Get: A Sony RX100 VA mirrorless camera from Pro Photo Supply
If You’re 35 or Under: You have twice the chance of winning, as a second Sony RX100 VA camera will be given to one donor under the age of 36!
November 21
Give: $10 or more
You Get: Two tickets with parking to the Portland Trail Blazers vs. Minnesota (12/21/2019) game, two tickets with parking to the Trail Blazers vs. Milwaukie (01/11/2020), and a basketball signed by the entire team!
December 3
Give: $10 or more
You Get: Two nights at Brasada Ranch in a Luxury suite and a round of golf
If You’re 35 or Under: You have twice the chance of winning, as a second Brasada vacation package will be given to one donor under the age of 36!
December 5
Give: $10 or more
You Get: Two weekend passes to Feast Portland 2020, a $500 gift card from New Seasons Market, a $150 gift card to Tasty n Daughters and one year’s supply of goodies from:
December 12
Give: $10 or more
You Get: A Tender Loving Empire vinyl package and weekend passes to Treefort Music Fest, Sisters Folk Festival, McMenamins Sabertooth Fest, Oregon Jamboree, Harefest and two tickets to the select show of your choice at the Portland Jazz Festival.
(The vinyl package includes four new TLE releases on vinyl with digital downloads, a $100 shopping spree, a comfy crewneck, a campfire mug for your adventures, and a set of three art prints.)
December 19
Give: $10 or more
You Get: A Specialized FX 1 Commuter Bike from Bike Gallery.
December 26
Give: $10 or more
You Get: A vacation package from the Oregon Cultural Trust that will take you across the amazing state we are lucky enough to call home! Visit giveguide.org for more details.
Throughout the Give!Guide there will be free events where you can show up and do good in person! Meet the non-profits in the Give!Guide, eat and drink fabulous local refreshments, and dance to banging beats produced by members of our lovely Portland arts community!
Please add these events to your calendar:
Give!Guide Kickoff Party
November 1, 2019, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Jupiter NEXT
900 East Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97214
Give!Guide Presents: Bocha feat. KayelaJ (DHH Accessible)
November 22, 2019, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Holocene Portland
1001 SE Morrison Street
Portland, OR 97214
Give!Guide Presents: Drae Slapz feat. Brown Calculus and Rasheed Jamal
December 12, 2019, 8:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Blvd
Portland, OR 97227
If you are unable to make a gift, we encourage you to stay involved by attending the Give!Guide’s free events and sharing our campaign with your social networks! Any help is appreciated!
We cannot wait to DO GOOD with you!
Blockhead: New Book by Oregon Tradeswomen TACC Graduate
In her creative nonfiction collection Blockhead, Grace Covill-Grennan documents her experiences working as a carpenter in the building trades, exploring the intersection of issues of gender, class, craft, and labor and how it all plays out on the job site. She uses hybrid-genre pieces—vignettes, character sketches, memories, and poetry—while attending to the issues of gender and class providing constant discomfort.
Grace will be in Portland for the book release event at Black Hat Books!
November 15, 2019
7:00 pm
Black Hat Books
2831 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.
Portland OR 97212
You may also purchase your copy of her handmade and numbered book from Another New Calligraphy.
