Another ‘Whites Only’ Barrier Crumbles
Discrimination against minorities and women in employment is far from over in the United States, but there has been an almost unnoticed, major breakthrough for blacks and other minorities in construction industry apprenticeship programs. Unfortunately, that improvement has not extended to women.
The ancient apprenticeship system--one in which young workers spend a total of four years in classrooms and on the job learning their trades from master craftsmen--is still the most effective way to get a good job in construction. But until the late 1960s, it was the exclusive domain of white males.
Anti-discrimination laws and changing customs have almost ended the exclusion of minorities from the ranks of the “aristocrats of labor,” as construction workers have been known for more than a century because of their skills and relatively high pay scales.
While blacks and other minorities also had long been kept out of the once “lily-white” apprenticeship programs, they are finally being integrated. And the gains for minorities seem to be continuing at a slow but steady pace.
Minorities now make up 13.5% of construction apprentices outside California, compared to less that 3% in the late 1960s. The proportion of minorities in California apprentice programs is an impressive 35%.
Nationally, minorities comprise 24% of apprentices among operating engineers, 34% among plasterers and 18% among sheet metal and carpentry apprentices. The percentages are almost as high in painting and bricklaying. With a few exceptions, minorities now make up about the same proportion of apprentices that they do in the work force as a whole.
(California curiously is not reflected in national statistics even though this state’s apprentices make up about 20% of the total in the country. “Incompatibility of computers” is cited as the only reason, “but we are working on that problem even now,” a Labor Department spokesman says.)
Serious efforts to break down discriminatory patterns in apprenticeship began in the late 1960s. There were widespread protests and public demonstrations, lawsuits were won and special pre-apprenticeship training programs were begun to prepare women and minorities for literacy, arithmetic and other tests required to enter the programs.
But resistance among white male workers was strong, and much--but not all--of the restrictive practices stemmed from bigotry.
Historically, many white male construction workers regarded their craft as an inheritance to be passed on to their children, usually their sons.
They argued that, since the rich can pass on their wealth and businesses through their wills, construction workers should be allowed to pass on their most valuable asset--well-paying, skilled jobs.
Workers may not have been familiar with Benjamin Franklin’s observation that “he that hath a trade hath an estate,” or the teaching in the Talmud: “Any father who does not give his son a trade steals from him.” But they knew their jobs were valuable and, as long as laws and custom permitted, those jobs and spots on apprentice programs were kept within the families of white men.
In the 1970s, laws specifically aimed at curbing discrimination in apprentice programs were enacted, and along with changing customs they helped bring about the general acceptance of minorities as apprentices.
But also young white men are less likely to move into the same jobs once held by their fathers or uncles. That change in attitude has considerably diminished the pressure to continue discriminatory traditions.
The changes, however, have had little impact on the number of women entering the construction trades.
Just 3.9% of the nation’s 235,000 registered apprentices in construction are women. While that marks a giant step forward for women apprentices--only about 0.03% were women until the end of the ‘60s--it took about a decade to achieve that piddling gain and there has been no further increase nationally since 1976.
California is doing somewhat better. Gail Jesswein, chief of the state’s division of Apprenticeship Standards, says 5.2% of the apprentices are female and their numbers are continuing to increase.
The lack of progress is primarily due to the historic sexist prejudice of white males that women are not up to the physical stress of the construction industry. Stricter enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in California has helped boost the entrance of women into apprentice programs.
But here as elsewhere, women have let men get away with prejudice by not pushing more forcefully and publicly to gain more apprenticeship positions.
Nationwide, there has been no appreciable increase in the total number of all construction apprentices in recent years, but California has chalked up an impressive 40% increase in just the past five years. That is not only the result of the state’s construction boom but also of efforts by industry, unions and government officials to create more apprentice positions. The overall increase in apprentice positions has provided more opportunities for women and minorities.
Much more has to be done to end the bigotry that still blocks minorities and women--particularly those who do not go through apprentice programs--from getting jobs in some construction trades.
Anti-discrimination laws must be more vigorously enforced and outreach programs must be intensified to assure minorities and women that the closed-door era has really ended--that they are wanted in the industry, not as low-wage substitutes but as skilled workers worthy of a good income.
But the most difficult task is to open those ranks to women. It is going to take determination and courage from all supporters of equal rights to make sure that jobs that once were limited to “white males only” aren’t now limited to “males only.”
