It was the early 1970’s when I graduated from high school. I really had no idea what to do, but my parents had convinced me I could do anything. I wasn’t that interested in college but followed my boyfriend to a small private college in Iowa. This lasted 1 semester before I was doing a semester away in Denver doing community organizing with Caesar Chavez, thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. I left the private college and enrolled in the University without Walls at the University of Minnesota. This was a very early sort of on-line program before the internet. It meant that I designed all my own classes and worked in the community to get my credits. I managed to get a degree in 2 years.

I had worked many traditional women’s jobs and really wasn’t good at any of them. But I was especially disturbed that women’s work was difficult and was paid far less than traditional men’s jobs. Which in my mind seemed easier and I thought I could do those jobs, work the same number of hours and get paid like a man which was at least 25% more. This is how I began the long series of nontraditional jobs.

First, I worked as a longshore worker, mostly in warehouses. All jobs were dispatched from a hiring hall. This was a big building with two entrances, one for women and one for men. The men’s hiring hall was like a big gym with folding chairs. The men played cards or shot dice while they waited for a job. The women’s hiring hall was smaller. It was like a living room with couches. The women knitted or talked in small groups while waiting for a job.

New gender equity laws had just been enacted so the workers were no longer using the terms women’s and men’s jobs. The new terms were heavy and light work. Of course, heavy worked paid more and I thought it was actually better work. The job dispatcher did not want me to take a “heavy work” job. I insisted. This caused an uproar in the hiring hall, but this small act helped more women take “heavy work”.

Then I became a steelworker. At the time I was offered three jobs two in a steel mill and one in a coal mine. I chose US Steel Homestead Works in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, largely because of the long and strong labor history of this particular steel mill. I had many jobs within the mill including a job called Hooker. Needless to say, after I got the job, the title was changed to “Crane Follower”. This was a job where you loaded railroad boxcar slabs of steel into railroad cars. This was a great job that had never been held by a woman. Once again, I had to insist that I could do the job. I carried a sledge hammer all day and the men gave me the nickname “Sledge Hammer Lil” and wrote that name all over the walls.

I was always going to the Human Resources office applying for new jobs within the mill. I was thrilled to be making great money and having so much opportunity to try new things. This is where I entered my first apprenticeship within the mill, motor inspector. This job was the title for a steel mill electrician.

The job was to wait in a job shack and when the whistle blew three long calls, this meant the mill was stopped with an electrical problem. We would rush to the breakdown and fix it as fast as we could. Every minute the mill was down cost money, so the pressure was on to fix it fast.

The job was to wait in a job shack and when the whistle blew three long calls, this meant the mill was stopped with an electrical problem. We would rush to the breakdown and fix it as fast as we could. Every minute the mill was down cost money, so the pressure was on to fix it fast.

There were about 7000 workers in the mill and 500 women. There were two women’s locker rooms. Almost everyone at the mill worked turns. This meant you rotated between shifts every week; one week of days (7am-3pm), one week of swing shift (3pm-11pm), and one week of graveyard (11pm-7am).

I organized the women through the union’s civil rights committee. We had dances, educational events and other gatherings for women. Eventually the lay-offs and the downturn of the steel industry began. I took on the chair of the job protection committee. Every month at the union meetings, I would report the lays offs in each of the divisions. Eventually, the mill closed, was torn down and became a shopping mall.

One of my former coworkers wrote a book about the steel mill and our union work. He talked about me. Add Mike Stouts comments. The steel mill.

My next non traditional job was a miner in a limestone mine in Lucerne Valley. This was probably the most difficult and dirty job I ever had. Much like the other nontraditional jobs it had great pay, but I saw so many injuries. I knew I could not last at this job and looked in the yellow pages under unions. I saw the electrician’s union and began studying for the electrician’s apprenticeship exam.

In 1981 I was accepted into the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Inside Wire(wo)man apprenticeship program. It took me 5 years to complete the apprenticeship program and I worked another 5 years as a journey level worker. I had many different jobs ranging from an early solar power plant to a Hollywood studio to a military base in the desert. I almost never worked with any women. And this is the reason I started WINTER.I eventually left the trade got my PhD and began doing research on women in the skilled trades.

WINTER began in 1987 as an idea to get more women into the skilled trades. Lynn Shaw, an electrician was sick and tired of being the only woman on the job. She decided instead of bemoaning or complaining she should DO something about it. She began by taking to other women in the skilled trades and they all agreed that more women on the job would make work better. They also agreed that if women only knew about the real opportunity in the skilled trades women would choose a non traditional career.

From the very beginning WINTER was all about training other women to get into the union building trades. The focus was always women of color, largely because we wanted to serve our community and the Los Angeles area is very diverse. Doing this is a complicated task, because often women thought that this kind of work was not for them. Also, employers were reluctant to hire women.

The early organizing began with simple 1-2 hour workshops promoting working in the skilled trades. Often the approach was showing the money that could be made and having real tradeswomen present in their work clothes. We even produced a giant (4’by2’) paycheck that we used as a prop during our outreach talks. While this proved to be effective for some women, we began to develop multiple approaches to helping women see themselves as a construction worker.

Women needed to understand they already had skills and abilities that suited them for the highly paid skilled trades. WINTER began to develop connections to traditional women’s work and interests to make skilled trades analogies for women. WINTER began to use examples that demonstrated the connection between traditional women’s work and the construction industry.

For example, if a woman was good a sewing by taking a flat piece of fabric and making a 3 dimensional dress. This skill demonstrates she has a good understanding and ability for spatial relations. This is the exact same skill a sheet metal worker uses to build a 3 dimensional duct from a flat piece of metal. A woman who bakes, makes measurements in volume. This is the exact same skill as a cement mason uses, only on a much large scale. If a woman is an athlete and has upper body strength, likes to wear jeans, be outside she is a perfect fit for a sprinkler fitter trade or a laborer or a brick mason.

Hundreds of workshops were done by volunteer tradeswomen and our advocates. Eventually by the early 1980’s the tradeswomen realized that funding and a real organization would be the best way to recruit and train women. The goal for WINTER was always to get more women into the skilled trades.

Finding a name for the organization was difficult. Madeline Mixer, the Western Regional Women’s Bureau Director had suggested that whatever the name was, it needed to begin with the word “women”. Ms. Mixer was an avid supporter of tradeswomen and she thought starting the name with women, would make it easier for women to find the organization. She had been searching for someone to start up a group in Southern California. In 1993 Ms. Mixer heard Lynn Shaw give an impassioned plea before a Little Hoover Commission. A flyer recruiting women to testify before the commission quotes Lynn. ”We are not here today to simply state our troubles. We have served or are serving or apprenticeships and we have worked hard. We are not asking for special treatment or special favors. We want to be trained, evaluated and hired equitably. We deserve and demand equal opportunity in apprenticeship training, getting a job and keeping a job.”

This testimony began a long collaboration between WINTER, Lynn Shaw and Madeline Mixer. Madeline gave the support of the Women’s Bureau, advice, help of every kind and financial support. She is responsible for the supporting in concrete ways the very early formation and work of WINTER.

Multiple names for the organization were considered. Women in Power (WIP) Women in Nontraditional Employment (WINE) and even the ridiculous Women Are Really Men (WARM).WINTER has had multiple homes. The first WINTER office, even before the organization had a name was in Lynn Shaw’s car trunk. Then eventually the accumulation of papers and workshop supplies made the organization move from the car trunk to Lynn’s garage. During this time, we hired our first part-time staff person, Ebony Shakoor-Akbar. This was the WINTER home when it got its name and its first big grant 1996, $75,000 from the Department of Labor’s Women In Apprenticeship and Non Traditional Occupations Act (WANTO).

WINTERs development was tied to Lynn Shaw’s work for the city as a Youth Build Program coordinator. While working for the city she convinced the Workforce Development Department to give WINTER an office. This began a long a fruitful relationship with the City of Long Beach.

The first WINTER office was in a shopping mall in downtown Long Beach (This mall and since been torn down) WINTER had two glass display windows that had a manikin of a woman dressed in overall and tools advertising women in the trades. When the mall closed the city moved us to the naval housing (now Villages at Cabrillo) in west Long Beach. This location enabled the WINTER trainees to work on building the Villages at Cabrillo (a large facility for the unhoused and veterans) as part of their hands-on training.

The City of Long Beach liked WINTER and was persuaded to give WINTER a fulltime administrative assistant. This person (her name was Nadine) did all things to keep the office running. For example, she scheduled student interviews and classes, outreach activities, and staff meetings. She kept track of supplies and equipment.

The next WINTER office was in the City of Long Beach’s Workforce Development office on Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach.

Long Beach City College hosted a nontraditional career faire with a work clothes fashion show. One of the speakers was an electrician from the local power plant Rose Salotto. She offered to help connect WINTER to the leadership of the power plant to possible give WINTER a free facility for training. This resulted in use of a building on the power plant ground for 5 years. When the power plant needed to undergo renovations, WINTER moved to a former sewing factory storefront on Caesar Chavez Drive in East Los Angles for 5 years.

The first foundation to fund WINTER, was the Liberty Hill Foundation for $5000. Later, the City of Long Beach also gave WINTER a small amount of funding. During the early days funding was very tight and WINTER depended on our allies and friends to provide in-kind support. This support included things like donated tools for various unions and apprenticeship programs, equipment from tradeswomen and other organizations, and supplies from individuals and local businesses. Local non-profits and the city government were also supportive.

Early partnerships were very critical to WINTERs operation. WINTER collaborated with the Black Workers Center, the Sex Equity Commission of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Carpenters Pre-Apprenticeship Program, Electric Women, Century Freeway Women’s Employment Project, Long Beach City College, Tradeswomen, Inc., other tradeswomen groups around the country, and many more. WINTER had a tradeswomen support group, a tradeswomen’s speakers bureau and used every opportunity to speak about women in the skilled trades.

Early WINTER had a series of Executive Directors. The Board would raise money and hire someone. It was difficult to raise money as a newly minted non-profit . Once the Board ran out of funding and could not pay the Executive Director, she would leave. Lynn Shaw always filled in as Interim Executive Director between the hiring of the Executive Directors. Most of the early Directors Ebony Shakoor-Akbar, Judy Vinson, and Veda Washington Johnson served only a short time. In 1993 (?) Alexandra Torres Galancid was hired as Executive Director. She stayed 20 years and was instrumental to growing WINTER to the organization it is today.

WINTER began as an urgent need to have hard working women consider nontraditional jobs. While equal pay for equal work continues to be a goal, women still make 84% of what men earn. WINTER was never just about a job, we worked to give women the full complement of service to insure their success in the skilled trades. Nontraditional occupations offer an immediate solution to the pay inequity between men and women. All trades union workers regardless of gender get paid exactly the same.

The real secret to developing WINTER, an organization dedicated to economic self-sufficiency and changing gender roles in the workplace for women is to never give up and spread the news everywhere that women can and should do work in the skilled trades. Information is power and women need to know that they can make a living wage, have excellent benefits for their families and have the joy of saying “I built that”.