NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
December 7, 2018 | PAGE 7
UNION DEMOCRACY
A sister to lead the Brotherhood
The 23,000-member Pacific
Northwest Regional Council of
Carpenters has a new top officer.
Evelyn Shapiro, 40, won the
most delegate votes in a Nov. 17
election to lead the region’s
largest construction union. She’s
the first woman ever elected to
head a regional council of the
United Brotherhood of Carpen-
ters. Labor Press reporter Don
McIntosh spoke with her by
phone Dec. 3.
You have an unusual story: You went
into a Carpenters apprenticeship after
getting a degree in political economics
from The Evergreen State College.
What made you decide to take up the
tools?
In high school I was kind of a community
service nerd. I did a lot with Habitat for
Humanity, and just really loved the tools. My
uncle was an electrician, but other than that, I
didn't have a whole lot of trades connections.
So I asked my neighbor who was in the
trades if he could help me get in, and he
suggested that he could get me in as a
flagger, which didn't sound that fun to me. I
didn't really think too much of it at the time,
but now having been in the trades for 18
years, I understand that it's pretty common to
funnel women into flagger positions, which
tend to be some of the more dangerous jobs
and tend to be jobs with less advancement
potential.
What challenges have you faced as a
woman in a trade that’s overwhelming
male — and what have you learned
about how to cope with them?
Oh gosh, that's like a three-hour-long
conversation. But in our industry, any group
that is not the predominant workforce is
going to struggle with not having a natural
and easy connection with training, with
advancement, with referrals, with all kinds of
stuff that automatically comes to folks who
have connections. I think women and people
of color suffer from not having those
connections. I always say that women and
people of color don't have any harder time
doing the work, but they do get tired of doing
the “second job” of having to prove yourself
constantly on the job site, in terms of your
capability, your experience, the ability for
people to have confidence in you. Something
that is really common in the trades is that no
matter how long you've been in, people
always assume that a woman is an
apprentice. So I’d literally be running a high-
rise crew and people would ask me to talk to
my journeyman, and I would say, “Sure,
which one would you like?” referring to the
many that were on my crew. As far as coping,
it’s based on creativity in whatever situation
arises. It's important to recognize and
understand who your allies are, because
there’s a lot of really great men in our craft
who want women to be successful. Every
woman also has to develop a little grit and
creativity to deal with BS when it comes up.
What kind of relationship does the
regional council have with employers?
It varies tremendously throughout our several
hundred employers. There are certainly some
employers who believe that the union is
absolutely the way to go and wouldn't have it
any other way, and want to make policies
and contracts that their employees are going
to be happy with. And there are employers
who don't share that vision. So there’s a
pretty wide range.
The Carpenters left the AFL-CIO in
2001, and there has sometimes been
competition with other construction
unions over craft jurisdiction. What are
your thoughts on the union’s
relationship with the rest of the labor
Turn to Page 11
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