The "Do Not Hire Lady Ironworkers!" Union Benefits Package
Female ironworkers are about to get big chunk of paid maternity leave, reports Buzzfeed's Cora Lewis. Six to eight months of paid maternity leave before delivery, and six to eight weeks post-delivery.
The membership of the 130,000-strong Ironworkers union is an overwhelmingly male crowd, but the approximately 2,100 women just won a benefit that would be prized by working women across the country: Six months of paid maternity leave.The leave, designed to be taken prior to delivery, complements six to eight weeks of post-delivery leave.
"The challenges of physical work associated with the ironworking trade create unique health challenges that can jeopardize a pregnancy," the union said in a statement announcing the benefit, noting that paid maternity leave "is virtually unheard of in the building trades."
...Bill Brown, CEO of Ben Hur Construction Co., called the benefit "an investment, because we want our well-trained ironworker women to come back to work."
A company can choose to do this -- but a mandate from the union? Not good.
I'm not saying that it's a bad idea for women to take leave around their pregnancy -- especially women in dangerous jobs. But who should pay for this?
I've blogged about this before -- how these mandated paid maternity leave packages are likely to affect women's hiring.
So, here's an employee whom you will be forced to give six months of with pay -- an employee who, at the end of it, maybe decide not to return at all.
You could hire that employee or an employee who does not get the chunk of leave.
Tough choiciepoo, huh?
Oh, and notice that nobody's mentioning time off for the men who are daddies, paid or otherwise. Perhaps the logic is that men don't endure the physical costs of pregnancy.
Still...equality, anyone?
And check this out:
Using back-of-the-envelope calculations, Brown estimated that training a new iron worker costs $32,000 over the course of a four-year apprenticeship, during which time the workers are also paid regular salaries."So when you add payroll to 32K a year, and you lose a woman worker, you're out more than 32K," he said. "Then you have to train another person to take their place, so it's a 64K proposition if you lose one female apprentice.
"To protect our investment, if we wanted women to stay in our industry, we had to do something."
Brown acts as co-chair of the Iron Workers labor-management working group, which came up with the plan for six months of paid leave along with Iron Workers General President Eric Dean.
Dean said he believes the benefit is the first of its kind in the building industry, but that he hopes it will be a model for others. The working group began talking about maternity benefits when looking into why such a high number of women were leaving the workforce for other professions.
"We've always had women, but never had an abundance of women," Dean said. "And many of them were leaving the industry after we spent an inordinate amount of time training them."
Maybe there's a reason that this is an overwhelmingly male job, and maybe it has to do with sex differences in muscle mass, testosterone, and (intertwined) differences in willingness to take risk. Male risk-taking is a mating display -- it helps show male physical and emotional quality. Female risk-taking, on an evolutionary level, is mainly just stupid.
WELDER-RELATED: My time with the welders -- a special post for Crid. (From the Ironworkers' Local 443 picnic, where I went with Gregg for his Killshot movie research for Elmore Leonard and director John Madden.)
via @ArthurFrDent
Forget not the instigating, um, masterwork.
Crid at April 18, 2017 6:32 AM
From the article:
Actually, that's seven and a half to eight months paid maternity leave. Six months prior, according to the article and six to eight weeks after.
What happens if she miscarries during the six months? Does she continue to get the leave? If not, what if she doesn't tell her boss that she miscarried so she can continue getting paid for nothing?
Patrick at April 18, 2017 10:03 AM
Seems to me that the most practical thing to do with a pregnant welder on a union jobsite is move her to firewatch, not pay her to sit at home.
Yes, this is a reason not to hire female welders, but it's also a reason not to hire union labor.
I guarantee you it doesn't cost $32k to train a welder in a right-to-work state.
Most female welders do art stuff (like stage sets, or steel sculptures), not commercial constrction.
IF there was an actual NEED to recruit female ironworkers, this would make sense. But I don't see the need. Why would any GC want to pay a premium to have women on a jobsite?
I'll theorize that whole purpose of this is PR. This is a benefit that will be seldom used (because there really aren't that many female welders), but the unions get to tout that they offer it.
AHW at April 18, 2017 11:08 AM
I think the trick to being a good righteous progressive is to never acknowledge that there are any trade offs in life or with your preferred policies. Increase the minimum wage 20% on a business operating with a 1% or 2%, no problem. Oh shit, now these businesses are automating and cutting jobs. Damn greedy capitalists. Mandatory 6 month maternity leave? Why aren't there more women welders? Its a complete mystery.
Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of conservative that don't factor in certain trade offs in life but I think its the progressives who have a real knack for ignoring any and all trade offs.
Shtetl G at April 18, 2017 11:25 AM
What liberal university did Bill Brown, CEO of Ben Hur Construction Co. graduate from? One that teaches that arithmetic is a tool for the patriarchal oppression of women?
Bill Brown is also co-chair, alongside Iron Workers Union General President Eric Dean, on the Ironworker Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust (IMPACT - oh progressively how clever) It sounds like he's the Union's useful idiot.
Brown says, "So when you add payroll to 32K a year, and you lose a woman worker, you're out more than 32K... Then you have to train another person to take their place, so it's a 64K proposition if you lose one female apprentice."
When they say "paid leave" do they mean paid at the wage the worker earns when she's working? If an iron worker makes $25 per hour and takes eight months of paid leave, that's more than $32,000 for nothing. Plus another $32,000 to pay a man to do her work. So there's another side of that 64K proposition. And if they cover her work by paying men to work overtime (they way they cover for absent women where I work) make that $80,000.
$80,000 for the same work a man is paid $32,000 for.
Ken R at April 18, 2017 2:19 PM
In a year or two they -- union and its members -- will say, "It is not fair women get this benefit. Men need to care for their wives during this time and bond with their children. This benefit needs to be extend to everyone!"
Well, that is what happened where I work, even without a union.
The Former Banker at April 18, 2017 5:52 PM
So what's the solution? Women stop working outside the home? Women stop having babies?
NicoleK at April 18, 2017 6:19 PM
The solution would be for women to recognize that if they plan on having children, they have to adjust their lives accordingly. This may mean that they can't or shouldn't work in certain jobs.
There seems to be a growing mentality (and I don't say women are the only ones guilty of this, nor do I say that all women are guilty of this) that we have to be accommodated in our life choices.
And frankly, it's getting out of hand. If you're obese, for instance, you can't be in the military. It's not the military's job to create a bariatric unit for you to work in. It's either upon you to lose the weight so you can be in the military, or accept the fact that if you're going to remain obese, that particular avenue is closed to you.
And if you're a woman who plans on having kids, maybe a career as a professional alligator wrestler just isn't for you.
Patrick at April 18, 2017 7:35 PM
A welding certificate at the local community college is $3800.
Radwaste at April 19, 2017 6:51 AM
As for why they would hire women, despite the cost, one answer was in the Slate piece on the same story:
"Keeping women in the field is essential for ironworking companies that want to get government contracts, too. States and municipalities often require vendors of a certain size to have affirmative-action plans in place, and federal contractors that don’t meet certain thresholds of employment of women and people of color must show that they’re undertaking good-faith efforts to increase their numbers. A growing number of private companies are also demanding that the contractors they hire employ a diverse workforce."
Katrina at April 20, 2017 6:46 AM
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