DWP Class for Women Enrolls 222--None Are Hired

This class mixes physics with weightlifting, basic algebra with hauling a heavy toolbox up and down stairs. All the students are women, and child care is offered down the hall.

Three nights a week, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has conducted a much-praised program designed to introduce women to one of the great male bastions of city employment--the skilled craft positions at the DWP.

But despite good intentions and the expenditure of $400,000, the utility’s efforts have become a frustrating exercise resulting in very little change: 222 women have graduated from the Utility Craft Pre-Training Program in the past year, but not a single one has been hired.

As with many government programs to increase the number of women and minorities in the work force, numerous obstacles have arisen. They have included city hiring rules that give preference to city employees, a fear of lawsuits by disgruntled male applicants and a plethora of more experienced men competing for the same positions.

“It couldn’t be more frustrating,” said Carol L. Nageotte, a journey-level electrical mechanic at the DWP who is an instructor. “I know it’s going to take a while to see the fruits of our labor.”

Now, 99% of the DWP’s skilled craft positions--such as steam plant assistant and toolroom worker--are held by men, officials said. Other trade jobs have a slightly higher female representation.

The opportunity to work for DWP wages, which range from $20,000 to $45,000 for entry-level positions, has attracted a variety of students to the experimental training program, some coming from as far away as San Diego.

Denise Carrillo, a former executive secretary, wants a position that will get her out of the office and pay a good wage. Patricia Wright has been unemployed for two years and needs to pay her bills and help support her two children.

For Tina Sultzbaugh, another recent graduate of the classes, the DWP is a family affair. Her brother works there and her uncle retired from the utility after decades there. She has worked in factories and considers the DWP a stable work environment that pays well.

Basic math, electricity and tool identification are crammed into the six-week course. So is hauling a wooden extension ladder around a parking lot and climbing the stairs with a toolbox in one hand and a roll of electrical cables in the other.

“I know why molecules pass through copper wire,” said Carrillo, a recent graduate. “I know what causes a short circuit. I know more physics than I ever wanted to know.”

Outside the classroom, the DWP recruitment effort has sparked bitter debate from all sides, the same sort of controversy that has surrounded the city’s affirmative action efforts for female police officers and firefighters.

The hiring of women police officers is further along than the DWP’s efforts, largely because the city is under a federal consent degree that enables it to select women who score lower than some men on the police eligibility test.

The police force is now about 14% women--up from 2% a decade ago. City Council members say their goal is to reach 43%, the same ratio as women in the area work force, but city bureaucrats say that is unlikely to occur soon.

The Fire Department has gone from no women firefighters in 1980 to about 40 today. Still, women represent only 1% of the work force. The city is working to increase that figure through recruitment efforts and a 10-week exercise program in which female candidates are paid to prepare for their biggest hurdle in the process--the physical abilities test.

At the DWP, some male job-seekers complain that they are being excluded from the training classes, and organizers plan to open them up to both sexes eventually. Employee unions have objected to some aspects of the program as well.

Some longtime employees resent it too, saying they fear that under-qualified women will be hired into the trenches, where they say high voltage and dangerous equipment are commonplace and one wrong move can have deadly consequences.

Even the women graduates are disgruntled. A group complained last month that the city refused to allow them to take all the job exams they were promised.

Phyllis Lynes, a city personnel manager, acknowledges that some of the city’s actions have proven controversial. “We wanted so much to make a difference that we might have gone too far in what we were proposing,” she said.

The department tried to help women by altering the Civil Service rules for the exam to become an electrical mechanical trainee. Women fill just two of 186 such slots, officials said.

First, DWP officials wanted the certificate from the training course to be deemed adequate preparation to take the test--instead of the traditional experience in the field. Then, even more controversial, they wanted to select top women candidates from the city’s eligibility list, which is based on test scores, before moving on to the men.

A host of groups--from labor unions to employee associations representing ethnic minorities--cried foul and the department backed off on the second proposal.

Another plan to create a special job classification for entry-level women, called a craft trainee, has met with similar protests.

“They have a horrendous record of women in the trades,” said Brian D’Arcy, business manager for Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “But instead of doing any preliminary work, they just wanted to force women onto the work force. It’s a very delicate issue for the employees.”

Another controversy developed last month when the most recent graduates of the certificate program were told that they could not take the test scheduled for Jan. 8 to become warehouse and toolroom workers.

Although that was one of the tests participants had been told they would qualify for, the city Personnel Department altered the test requirements so that only city employees could qualify.

Lynes explained that there are only a handful of openings for warehouse and toolroom workers this year and plenty of applicants applied from within the city, including 60 women.

Some graduates say the city betrayed them after they invested so much time in the class. Led by Carrillo, they have been urging city officials to open up the exam.

The women won a delay in the test and council members directed city personnel officials to find a way for the women to compete for positions.

Even when that question is settled, DWP officials expect the controversies to continue as they attempt to bring gender balance to this entrenched male terrain.

Judy Davis, DWP human resources director, said the program, which has received honors from outside groups, will only succeed if it is allowed to work over time. “It’s not an immediate program,” she said. “It will take a long, long time to change the work force.”