2019 Award of Excellence Winner Vicki O'Leary: Union Leader Fights for Diversity and Respect

In February 2017, Outi Hicks, a 32-year-old union carpenter apprentice and single mother of three, was bludgeoned with a metal pipe by Aaron Lopez, a part-time nonunion worker at a biomass plant construction site in Fresno, Calif. He was still hitting her when workers reached them and pulled him off.

其他现场工作人员甚至希克斯的工会同事都不知道的是，该项目脚手架供应商雇用的洛佩兹（Lopez）骚扰了几天。希克斯去世，洛佩兹被指控犯有一级谋杀罪，原因是由于精神错乱而恳求无辜。从那以后，他被统治胜任，但直到2019年12月才终于出现in court, when he pleaded no-contest to second-degree murder charges in a plea deal with prosecutors. Lopez now is serving a sentence of 15 years to life in a state prison.

“All tradeswomen were shaken to their absolute core the day that happened,” says Vicki L. O’Leary, a 30-plus-year union ironworker veteran who now is the international union’s general organizer for diversity. She is also a high profile advocate for women in the North American Building Trades Unions as it and the industry address challenges in boosting their workforce numbers.

After Hicks’ murder, union women flocked to social media to share their fear and frustration. “Continuing on means being complicit with humiliation, discrimination and abuse. We’re at the mercy of the abusers and I can’t pretend it’s ok anymore,” said one boilermaker who quit construction after a decade of work.

“I realized then that every woman who has worked construction has been, at some time in her career, afraid. This fear isn’t about being injured during the work itself, but for her personal safety,” O'Leary says.

She and others wondered why “there couldn’t be that one guy” who could have prevented such a tragedy. That palpable concern led to a pilot program she conceived—Be That One Guy.

Some jobsite intervention efforts exist in building trade locals or on projects, but this one had strong buy-in from Ironworkers International General President Eric Dean, and now is being rolled out to all 130,000 union members to train those on site to be “upstanders” who can deflect or change the tone of a tough situation.

“We can no longer stand by because we never know when someone could flip just like this guy did on Outi Hicks,” O’Leary says.

O’Leary and Dean also had heard at a conference comments by Bridget Booker, a union ironworker from Peoria, Ill., who had worked while pregnant, hiding her condition under baggy clothes. She miscarried at 16 weeks.

奥利里说：“布里奇特站起来，说她有一天会在杆贴上呆在杆补丁中失去了孩子。”“埃里克（Eric）告诉我，他觉得自己好像在肠道里打了傻子。”女性铁工的类似故事和恳求也得到了联系。

Pregnancy coverage and paid post-delivery maternity leave isnow a reality. “We wanted to make sure our members didn’t have to choose between having a family and working,” says O’Leary.

Susan Eisenberg, a former union electrician and now a Brandeis University educator who has chronicled the struggles of construction women in several books, including a2018 updateof her earlier published "We'll Call You If We Need You," notes O’Leary’s “ability to connect grassroots tradeswomen, union leaders and contractors, so they can all be heard and lead together.”

Eisenberg is impressed by the methodical rollout of the two programs “combined with education to bring everyone forward,” and says O’Leary “leads by example, demonstrating that advancing women, advancing unions and advancing the industry are inseparable goals.”

For framing harassment as a safety issue and creating a program that works toward prevention, for pioneering an effort to provide all ironworker women with a key workplace benefit to attract and retain them, and for her push to use the reach and muscle of the union movement to insure workplace quality and career potential for women at a time of critical need, the editors of ENR have chosen Vicki O’Leary to receive its 2019 Award of Excellence.

Domino Effect

It didn’t take long for O’Leary and industry leadership to realize the “dangerous domino effect” that jobsite harassment—gender-based or any other—has on an entire project. The harasser is focused on the target, the victim is focused on the harasser, witnesses are uncomfortable and distracted—with fear and safety risk escalating for all.

“If you’re out there and distracted because of some senseless nonsense that goes on, you’re not going to be concentrating well,” says Kevin Hilton, CEO of the ironworkers’ IMPACT labor-management trust. “We should all be treated with respect. You’re going to see this thing take off not just with the ironworkers but with other trades.”

在1月在巴尔的摩举行的会议上，以教育当地人的领导人是一个人，当奥利里问是否有人听说过该计划时，奥利里只会抬起几只手。但是她的意思是：“这不仅是关于女性的，而且是关于每项工作中最弱的联系。”到了会议结束时，奥利里（O’Leary）已经实现了买入，让经理们举手并承诺：“我将是一个告诉同事，工头，一般领班等人将其击倒的人。做正确的事情只需要一个人。”

O’Leary’s push to sustain tradeswomen through focused attention on safety and needed culture change draws praise and support from women in the field.

纽约市十二年的铁工Ambra Melendez说：“每个女人都想继续，但现场不良行为使它变得如此困难，并且在建筑中允许这种态度。”Rachelle Hershey是2017年威斯康星州学徒的早期孕妇计划受益人，他称O’Leary为“为我们击球的人。”Alberici Construction的安全总监Kathy Dobson说，O’Leary“对自己的工作充满热情，并将其传达给所有人。”

Industry management also has been quick to realize her critical role in advancing women as a workforce resource for the industry and ensuring the needed return on their union and contractor training investment. The ironworkers estimates the cost of training an apprentice at $32,000 or more—wasted if the person leaves.

建筑行业总裁肖恩McGarvey O孩子们说eary’s successful programs at the ironworkers’ union made her a natural to lead the expanded mission of the umbrella group’s tradeswomen advocacy committee. “We had a pool of smart dedicated women, but Vicki stood out … as someone who could take that committee to the next level,” he says.

William Brown, chairman emeritus of Ben Hur Construction and IMPACT co-chairman, says O’Leary “is in a really good place to help advance what we’re trying to accomplish … particularly perceptions by owners on how diverse we are.” Associated General Contractors CEO Stephen Sandherr notes that O’Leary has added a new dimension to how “we can attract talented people into the industry.”

That included executing its new diversity strategy and expanding its annual Tradeswomen Build Nations conference—which started out as a California grassroots effort by craft women in 2002—into a bigger go-to event. The 2018 gathering attracted a record 2,300 attendees to Seattle, including some with no union affiliation.

"The incredible success of the [conference] was the distinctly feminine approach to grass roots organizing—allowing, encouraging, enabling any women who wanted to step up and be part of it, to do so, in ways small and large," says Melina Harris, a Seattle union carpenter, longtime tradeswomen activist and co-organizer of the startup events. "This created a feeling of ownership, and a different angle to empowerment." Organizers have also reached out to tradeswomen in Ireland, Australia, the Philippines and elsewhere to participate and to boost their own organizing efforts.

Related Links Craft Worker Maternity Leave Benefit Is Born ENR's Top 25 Newsmakers 2019

Industry Roots

With her father, John Ridgley, a 37-year union ironworker now retired, O'Leary grew up in Chicago and Arkansas—following his work—and draws inspiration from her family’s roots in the craft and the union. But becoming an ironworker herself never crossed her mind until she was propelled by competition with her brother, John, also an ironworker.

高中毕业后担任法律秘书时，奥利里（O’Leary）在餐桌上听了她的父亲和兄弟说话。一天晚上，她的父亲提到工会已经开始接受女学徒，她的兄弟说她永远无法完成这项工作。她觉得敢于申请并通过，并通过了哥哥的书面考试成绩。

她说，这可能已经结束了，但是奥利里（O’Leary）参加了一个方向，几个月后，一位学徒协调员呼吁“明天上班”。奥利里（O’Leary）的母亲玛丽·里奇利（Mary Ridgley）记得自己母亲为年轻寡妇养家糊口的努力，鼓励了奥利里（O’Leary）。“我总是告诉她，你必须自己在世界上做到这一点，你不能依靠某个男人为你做。”

As an apprentice in Local 1, O’Leary’s training took her to many big Chicago projects. “I’m not going to pretend it was easy” being a young woman on a jobsite in 1985, “because it wasn’t,” O’Leary says. But early on, she met and married ironworker Tom O’Leary, who was “that one guy,” sticking up for her on the jobsite, she says. Son Hayden was born in 1992, and O’Leary has treasured being a mom.

Click below for a video of how Vicki O'Leary is pushing to lead industry change:

Drive To Excel

Bridge project assignments led to a city job offer to help maintain its bascule bridges. O’Leary realized that experience in the field alone wasn’t enough for a woman in a male-dominated craft. “I didn’t just want to succeed, I wanted to excel,” O’Leary says. Using apprentice credit, she earned a degree from the National Labor College near Washington, D.C., with a triple major in labor education, labor studies and union leadership.

O’Leary’s studies sparked her vision to improve the workplace for women, says former instructor Jennifer Harrison, now a University of Maryland administrator. “She was strong and forthright about … using personal strength to alter the status quo,” the educator says. O’Leary also earned a master’s in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University in a distance learning program boosted by on-campus intensives such as a stay at a monastery to learn servant leadership.

In all this time, O’Leary kept working. When a manager retired, he recommended O’Leary for his job as Chicago’s environmental health and safety coordinator at the city Dept. of Transportation. “That position took me off the jobsite as an ironworker and put me in a position of authority over them,” she says.

她说：“我意识到我可以为自己做更多的职业，但我也可以有所作为。”“我在一个很好的当地人，我的性别不一定会阻止我退缩，但我并不理会一个女人或不适合霉菌的人的工作场所。”目前，北美大约有2,000名女熨斗人员，而130,000名男子。

O’Leary’s mix of academic, field and management experience impressed leaders at that union, officially the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. She joined the management team in 2015, when Eric Dean realized the union needed a stronger advocate in the diversity role.

工会execu斯科特•马利tive director, says “it doesn’t take long to recognize she’s worked around a lot of guys and understands what that workplace can be like.” Adds Jeff Norris, the union’s Canadian safety coordinator: “She is very approachable and very open minded.”

O’Leary has never “said no” to an opportunity to learn, and “I still don’t,” she says. After joining the international, she graduated from the National Labor Leadership Institute at Cornell University and Harvard Law School’s Trade Union Program, which prepares next-gen union leaders to face complex economic and political environments.

奥利里（O’Leary）于2019年2月返回哈佛大学，与新英格兰铁工区议会主席伯尼·埃弗斯（Bernie Evers）共同主持人 - 新政策倡议的高灯光。“这是一个关于如何在工会文化中建立变化的故事，”哈佛大学计划总监兼前美国劳动部政策副副部长沙龙·布洛克（Sharon Block）说。“多样性是劳工运动的未来的重要组成部分。”

O’Leary is using her new perch to propel action by union leaders at national and local levels, spreading the gospel of preventing harassment and making jobsites receptive to a more diverse workforce.

“You’re always met with skeptics, but it’s my job as a leader and Vicki’s to shape the narrative, so everyone understands it’s the right thing to do,” says Dean. “She’s done a great job in getting us to change the optics of how our union looks at things.” With a breakneck schedule, O’Leary estimates that she is on an airplane every four days, on average.

Sharpies Aren't Enough

在最近的演讲活动,她tackled-often bluntly—additional challenges, such as the need for separate portable toilets so women don’t have to use them with “urinals in their faces.” She told owners at a Construction Users Roundtable meeting how women on jobsites have to deal with sexually suggestive graffiti: “We carry a sharpie, and it’s not necessarily for the work we are doing.”

在Jobsite厕所中，“我们看到了我们应该擅长的非常具体的任务，” O'Leary说。她说，如果网站管理无法解决问题，那么与Sharpie一起解决问题至少是一个即时解决问题。

But jobsite harassment for women will take more than sharpies to counter, with many incidents still not reported or even shared with peers due to guilt and fear of blackballing, retribution and termination. “Women have not put in the complaints and grievances at the rate men have over the years, so we don’t have the data for enough government or industry response,” says activist Harris.

Click on video below to see Vicki O'Leary's ENR Award of Excellence acceptance and her call for others in industry to "Be That One Guy."

Getting Things Done

奥利里（O'Leary）并不是建筑物交易的第一位贸易妇女委员会主任，但她接管了改变劳动力人口的劳动人口统计信息，更紧密地将多样性问题与项目完成，劳动力弹性和工会生存联系起来。

She focuses “on the big picture as someone who wants to get things done,” says Lindsay Amundsen, a committee member who is workforce development coordinator for Canada’s building trades.

At a recent meeting, members voiced concern that jobsite harassment should be characterized as “psychological violence” to boost its visibility as a safety issue for both union managers and federal regulators, rather than just seen as a workplace bias issue. “That OSHA won’t do anything on this unless someone is injured or killed seems ridiculous to me,” O’Leary told attendees at a Feb. 20 meeting.

On her committee to-do list is working with the Center for Construction Research and Training, a building trades research group, on a Be That One Guy-style training program for all crafts. She says the committee also continues to advocate for language that each building trades union should adopt into its constitution prohibiting “psychological violence, harassment or intimidation.”

委员会成员报道说看到我的变化ndividual unions, despite vastly different cultures and rates of embracing change. “Our board understands they have to listen to apprentices and that we can do better, but real change won’t happen until women are at least 20% of trades. You need that tipping point,” says one committee member.

The boilermakers’ union is the first to adopt anti-harassment language into its constitution. The electrical workers’ union and the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union (SMART) are set to vote on similar measures this summer. “Women are stepping out and being active in the trades, but you still have the stereotype. Culture change does not happen overnight,” says Mechelle McNew, business manager for sheet metal workers union Local 464 in Ponca City, Okla., who adds that O'Leary's zeal to "tell it like it is" to male leadership sets a tone for others to do likewise.

Educator Eisenberg says O'Leary's advocacy style is "to acknowledge that we have problems to understand and address, and to give others confidence that looking at problems isn’t airing dirty laundry, but a necessary step in moving forward." Adds the observer: "Because her commitment is longterm, she neither expects a full wish list immediately nor is satisfied with a one-shot photo-op, but prioritizes what will have most impact."

Building the Pipeline

建筑参与者看到在工作现场和领导地位的女性建立管道方面有很强的上涨空间，并指出解决问题的技能。电气工人工会外展代表塔恩·戈林（Tarn Goelling）说：“站点上有各种各样的任务，承包商拥有的多样性越多，承包商的实力就越大。”

“Men and women both expect to see a higher level of professionalism on site, and with that should come a safer workplace that is free from harassment," she adds. "Culture shift is happening, but for many, it’s not fast enough.” Goelling adds that “where women sit on bargaining or safety committees, they have a voice.”

为了帮助招募下一代妇女，铁工工会加入了其他美国团体，这些团体提供了预先批准的计划，以教授学生的基本技能，从而取得成功。该工会在加利福尼亚州贝尼西亚的培训中心专门为妇女举行了一门课程。“我们与经过该计划的妇女保持了85％的保留率，” O’Leary说。

Students get three weeks of hands-on training, taught primarily by experienced female ironworkers, and direct entrance into an apprenticeship when they complete it. So far, more than 100 women have graduated from Benicia, with dozens more poised to join them this month.

Apprentice Desirée Crawford, in the current class, cites female instructors as a key component of its success. “Instead of thinking that I’m getting into the construction business and it’s a man’s world, I see these strong women, and I’m learning that it can be anybody’s world,” she says.

O’Leary’s advocacy also empowers others outside the building trades. Karen Dove, executive director of Seattle pre-apprentice training program ANEW, says women now make up about 20% of area construction apprentices.

Media reports say that some Seattle projects have had up to 28% female craft participation. “We’re moving the needle, it’s incredible, but we won’t change the stigma of women in construction until we have more people like Vicki,” says Dove.

Meanwhile, the impact of Outi Hicks’ murder continues to resonate. At the 2017 tradeswomen conference in Chicago, in a moment of solidarity with the slain carpenters’ apprentice, hundreds of attendees signed an oversized poster of her likeness created by electrical workers' union member Latisha Kindred that is boldly titled “We are Outi Hicks.”

“I don’t know why [Hicks] didn’t say anything,” says Kayla Franklin, a 23-year union carpenter and Hicks friend in Fresno-based Local 713. “She always called me for a ride. She loved her job.”

Meanwhile tradeswomen are gaining confidence that the building trades and Vicki O’Leary are fighting for their safety, their dignity and their opportunities.

With reporting by Pam Radtke Russell and Bruce Buckley