In 1979, Lauren Sugerman dropped out of college, moved into Chicago, and set about earning an honest living. After a temporary stint as a translator for the census bureau, Lauren turned to the technical trades...a career option newly opened to women.
One year before, affirmative action guidelines were first applied to women in the construction trades. This started to break down the doors for women interested in higher wage jobs, like Lauren. "I consider myself an affirmative action baby," Lauren says.
Sugerman at left.
Lauren Sugerman is the president of Chicago Women In Trades ( CWIT ) , a 20-year-old organization built to support tradeswomen, and women seeking entry into blue collar, non-traditional employment. CWIT was created in the midst of a threatening atmosphere for its members. One of President Reagan's first acts after his election in 1980 was to open the possibility of dismantling federal affirmative action laws. Women from Chicago Women Carpenters ( a support group that previously met over potlucks to discuss work conditions ) found themselves organizing picket lines and protests to preserve the affirmative action guidelines. Women from all trades emerged to support the carpenters, and a new organization was quickly formed.
Lauren was among the women who attended those first potlucks and describes herself as relieved to find them. She recounts the treatment of women on work sites in those days as brutal. On one occasion, she was harassed and fondled by a group of men while working on a skip hoist. Lauren says, "I felt like clothing was shredding off my body." The potlucks, and eventually, CWIT, provided emotional support for the many women who found themselves subject to such harassment.
Lauren did find some problems with homophobia on work sites and within the union system as well. Openly lesbian, she chuckles that "... women are always assumed to be lesbians [ when they're working in the trades ] ."
CWIT's focus quickly expanded to training women to deal with and help to eradicate harassment, both on the job, and in the laws. Lauren recalls, "We decided that the only way it can change is if we're out there," and this notion helped CWIT start a journey that has become 20 years of skill sharing, mentorships, creating policy, and, perhaps most importantly, organizing.
"Organizing skills and building skills are the same," Lauren observes. "You need a vision, a blueprint, a good collaboration, and hard work." CWIT started with programs designed to strengthen the women already involved in the trades, both physically and mentally. "We borrowed a space from a bar, which no longer exists, at Sheffield and Belmont," Lauren says. There, CWIT provided everything from physical fitness classes and weight training to skill sharing workshops ( weekends devoted to learning to weld, use various tools, and more ) , and trainings around sexual harassment policy.
CWIT later expanded into lobbying and helping to create policies and guidelines, when its members saw slow or no change from their government. The sexual harassment training workshops were offered to losers of lawsuits that CWIT implemented.
According to Lauren, affirmative action is still vital to American women's' economic status, in a climate she describes as "maintenance of segregation" and "occupational apartheid by gender." She points out that, in a total of 20 occupations identified as the trades, women only make up five percent of the workers.
"There have been enormous changes in the idea of jobs women can do," Lauren says. "But the numbers are completely stagnant in construction and the labor movement." CWIT offers various programs to insure that the numbers will rise again. The Manufacturing Opportunities for Women Program, started in 1998, attempts to create bridges between women interested in high wage manufacturing occupations in the Chicago area and manufacturers interested in recruiting and hiring them. Also, the Aspiring Tradeswomen Program for the 2000-2001 school year introduced 40 female juniors and seniors from eight Chicago Public Career Academies to training opportunities, apprenticeships, and most importantly, adult mentors.
Lauren was recently awarded a degree from the graduate school of New Hampshire College. A grant she received last year gave her the opportunity to take a sabbatical from CWIT and travel to various developing countries, where she found some encouragement of her own.
Lauren met tradeswomen from South Africa who had started their own skill sharing workshops, which have resulted in a very different community. "Women built roads where there were none before," Lauren recounts. "It is tremendous to do something like providing your neighbors with running water for the first time."
In this way, these women's work has greatly changed both themselves and their surroundings. One woman told Lauren that "I am not dependent on a man to fix things," and "Now, we know how to make something from nothing." Lauren also traveled to Cuba, where tradeswomen had experienced similar transformations after learning and sharing their skills. Lauren was told, "I used to be a home-body. Now, I'm a home builder." Lauren feels that these women have taught her to recognize that no amount of devastation is insurmountable, a lesson she cherishes, especially in the wake of the events of Sept. 11.
Lauren returned from her sabbatical with a renewed sense of purpose, both for herself and CWIT. "Occupational segregation is the reason women are poor," she says. As she writes in a recent CWIT newsletter, "...organizing and policy development has given us an opportunity to prove affirmative action does work, that it is fair and still necessary, especially for women wanting access to nontraditional jobs. So it seemed like deja vu this past January when Bush's first nominee to head the Department of Labor was Linda Chavez, an outspoken opponent of affirmative action ... the message from the Bush administration was a dangerous signal that attacks on affirmative action will continue, and, in response, tradeswomen will have to continue to fight for access to high wage, high skilled, blue collar, male dominated jobs."
The benefits of the trades include paid medical insurance, a pension, higher wages, and a union to negotiate it all. Lauren also points out less the less physical benefits: "...the power of being able to fix and create. It is an enormous, untranslatable power. It is the power to transform your entire life."
Chicago Women in Trades celebrates their 20th Anniversary with a gala Thursday, Nov. 8. Speaker Peggie Carlson, one of the first African American female pipe fitters, will reflect on her experience. State Rep. Julie Hamos will receive CWIT's Building Equality award. The gala starts at 5 p.m. at Reza's Restaurant, 432 W. Ontario. Call ( 312 ) 942-1444.