National Skills Summit

National Skills Summit
Innovative Initiatives: Targeted Populations

Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW): Blue Collar Prep and Project Superwomen

The Challenge:

To provide the building and construction trades with well-prepared candidates for apprenticeships and to provide women with the opportunity to enter skilled blue collar careers.

The Solution:

Train women in construction and facilities maintenance in order to provide a qualified pool of workers to needy employers with employment opportunities.

The Partners:

Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), founded in 1978, is a nonprofit organization serving the New York City metropolitan area. The organization's mission is to train, place, and support women seeking economic self-sufficiency through employment in the skilled blue collar trades and other jobs commonly viewed as nontraditional for women. NEW also provides technical assistance and support services for unions and employers nationwide. NEW is planning to open a training site on Long Island.

Building and Construction Employers and Trade Unions work with NEW in an effort to recruit more women and make the construction workplace more welcoming and accessible to females.

The Story:

Theresa Dove first came to NEW following a period of incarceration. She enrolled in NEW's Blue Collar Prep pre-apprenticeship training program, which provided both workplace health and safety education and the vocational training she needed to re-enter the workforce. After graduating from Blue Collar Prep, she was recruited by a representative from Millwrights Local Union 740 and is currently a first-year apprentice, working on turbine engines and installing conveyer belts. At the completion of her next semester's training as an apprentice at the New York City District Council of Carpenters Labor Technical College, Theresa will earn $21.15 per hour as a second-year apprentice Millwright.

Blue Collar Prep, where women train for apprenticeships in the building and construction trades, is just one of NEW's programs. NEW also offers Projecct Superwomen, where women train in the field of facilities maintenance. Both programs combine literacy, math, and physical fitness training with hands-on classes in woodshop, basic electricity, plumbing, blueprint reading, and safety. Because the women placed by NEW continue to face barriers in their male dominated occupations, NEW works alongside the unions to help improve the retention of its women.

NEW places an average of 75 percent of its graduates in jobs that pay between $9 and $28 an hour plus medical benefits, with an average starting wage of $12. NEW graduates work as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, laborers, track maintenance workers, and facilities maintenance workers. Employers include Amtrak, United Parcel Service, Bell Atlantic, Con Edison,Bovis Lend Lease, UPS, Otis Elevator, the Port Authority, the Metropolitan Opera, CUNY, and Columbia University. Unions include: electricians, carpenters, elevator maintenance and construction, tile setters, operating engineers, and cement masons.

NEW receives funding from the U.S. Department of Labor, the State of New York, the City of New York, foundations, corporations, and banks.

A Model of Innovation:

NEW operates out of the Judith P. Vladeck Center for Women, a refurbished firehouse in the heart of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. This unconventional facility holds classrooms, a fully equipped workshop, and a gym with weight training equipment. It took a different kind of vision to design such a non-traditional training facility. Such out-of-the-box thinking permeates NEW's approach, and is reflected in their daily work alongside the unions to assist their women graduates in their male-dominated enterprises.

Contacts:

Martha Baker, Executive Director
Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW)
243 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
212-627-6252 (p)
212-255-8021 (f)
www.new-nyc.org
new@new-nyc.org

Martin Daly, Director
New York City District Council of Carpenters
Labor Technical College,
395 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
212-727-2224 (p)
212-727-9776 (f)