JOURNEYWOMAN - Pride and a Paycheck

Editor’s Note
Apprentices and Journeywomen and those sisters
who are in the process of “deciding” their
futures….have you ever wondered what it’s like
where the apprenticeship system began? In 1989,
after 10 years in as a bricklayer in the Bay Area/San
Francisco, Stella Cheng won a fellowship from her
union to learn traditional masonry techniques used on
the restoration of the Reims Cathedral, in the
champagne region of France. She lived in heart of a
guild with 59 young men aged from 15 years old to
24. She’s still not sure who was more in a state of
shock. It seems that when her union in San Francisco
contacted them, somewhere across the ocean,
someone forgot to mention that Stella was a woman.
They made an exception after a lot of negotiating but
females were not officially admitted into the guild until
2002, although they still live apart from their brother
apprentices. When her fellowship ended, Stella
petitioned to be allowed to continue her training,
despite being a woman and despite being an
American. They made her jump through a hundred
hoops, each with a different degree of difficulty but
she did it. Stella continues to work, raise a family and
write about her life in Rodez France and we know we
will hear a lot more from her now that her workerwriter voice has blossomed! Thank you Stella for
opening our minds to the travel options to being a
tradeswomen!
Check out the July/August 2013 issue of Pride on
www.prideandapaycheck.com
for more from Stella Cheng.
THE JOURNEY IN
JOURNEYWOMAN
© 2013 By Stella Cheng, Journey Mason, Rodez France
If you always stayed at home, inside the walls of your house,
how much could you really know about life? Step outside of
what you know and walk to the end of the block. What do you
notice for the first time? Is it warm for the season? Do you
need to adapt your clothing to be comfortable? Who do you
meet? Do you know these people? Could they help you if you
really needed it? Would they? Could you render them service
if the moment came? Do they know someone that offers
something you might want?
If every day, you went a little bit further down that road, or in
your area, exploring and discovering, you'd be a different
person than if you stayed at home. Your mind would wake up
and wonder about things and people and how they fit
together. You might meet folks that are a bit like you or you
might get to know people completely different from
yourself...who can teach you things you've never even
considered.
This is how the guilds in Europe form their masters. As soon
as their apprenticeship is finished, young workers embark on
their journey and are obliged to travel...on a very long trip (up
to seven years for some trades.) Some of the guilds forbid
their aspiring masters from going home until they reach the
end of the road.
(Continued next page.)
Most prevent contact with the "known" in one's life from being a security blanket, by sheer distance. Travel (even
outside the borders of one's own country) is the ideal vector towards mastery and maturity. This is the journey in
journeyman/woman.
The things you learn about yourself are unavoidable. Your strengths and weaknesses surge forward with each
challenge. Finding work, sometimes, is the easiest part of your trip. Your skills become your passport. Your abilities
are the language that all craftsmen/women understand. Spoken language is acquired rapidly by using it daily as just
another one of the tools in your bag. Strangers give you a chance in their workshop because they are curious. Many
have never seen a worker from your region/country and want to see how your country folk do their trade. They watch
you, they scrutinize the way you move, they touch your tools as you place them on the work bench, they make
comments on how you are dressed.
If you are receptive, you will understand what they say without knowing their dialect. They'll keep you for a week, to
see what you can do...to give them enough conversation to last them a year. If in that short period of time, you can
show them you are worth keeping, they might offer work for a month. This might turn into a year. They might have a
cousin in the next region you're heading to that has a father-in-law that might know of someone that's hiring. Open
yourself up to the experience. When you're learning in an unknown place, your entire being is on alert and you absorb
everything you need to know with ease. If you prove yourself worthy, housing becomes available: a dry corner in the
workshop, or a spare room behind the shoemaker's, an empty caravan that you can stay in for the fall and winter
seasons, a spare tent to carry you through the others. People want to help you because you're worth it.
Your capacity, to judge those who are helpful and sincere and to discern who might be jealous and deceitful, becomes
refined. You are at the mercy of fate, and the choices you make decide your destiny.
Most guild members, on the path towards mastery, change regions or countries each year until they have learned how
to handle each material that each region furnishes. Each material is transformed into a finished product using
methods and tools specific to its qualities. For example, granites found in Brittany must be cut with absolute
precision. If you are a quarter of an inch off from the desired surface, that’s a quarter of an inch that you will have to
work and rework until you get to the line. Diamond-edged tools are expensive and you'll wear them out or off in the
doing and redoing. The pneumatic tools used for granite are massive and need the use of the legs as well as the arms
to keep in place.
The tender lime stones of the Loire valley are like warm butter in comparison. The tools for shaping this material are
easily found or made out of pieces of metal. Band saw blades are cut into strips and embedded into wooden boards to
plane the stone. Sandstone is often shaped with axe-like tools called "taillants" with changeable teeth or tools which
resemble meat-tenderizers called "bouchardes" or bush-hammers. Only tungsten-tipped chisels resist this abrasive
material.
A master stonemason must know how to measure, draw, cut and set any kind of stone, in any kind of architectural
style, in any region. From the experience gained from his/her journey, s/he can diagnose, prevent or treat
potential, developing, or existing problems. The unknown becomes the known. And when an obscure material, no
longer used in present times, like serpentinite stone, needs restoring, his/her experience will take over and get the
job done.
Each trade is different according to the region and which materials are available. The wood available on the Pacific
Coast is quite different from the wood found in the Appalachian Mountains or in the South or the Great Lake States.
Depending on its characteristics like hardness, weight, strength, texture or porosity, the tools and methods used are
different. A cook in northern France will use primarily butter while his/her peer in the South of France will only use
olive oil.
Take the journey. See how your work is done elsewhere. Become a master of not only your trade, but of your
destiny. At the end of the trip, you’ll have seen many places and met many people. Now you get to decide where you
feel the best, where you want to call home, whose food is the most delicious, whose climate suits your personality.
You get to settle where you fit. The best part is that you will have lived and acquired the skills of a master. Now it’s
your turn to open your home to a traveling worker, to hire those who want to learn, to scrutinize and judge if s/he is
worthy. When you have taught well, and the journeymen/women, that you have trained, surpass your own
abilities, your mastery is confirmed. Perhaps, you will stop growing but your reputation as a master who transmits
his/her savoir (knowledge, wisdom, experience) will spread throughout your trade, throughout your country...and
perhaps beyond. Stella F. Cheng 2013
Addendum: If you were to ask any tradesperson in any region to make a list of the best craftpersons in his/her trade, the same names will come up over
and over again. Masters of their trade are known and recognized by their peers, without having to add that title to their name. Apprentices, take note of
these persons, contact them and ask if you might learn from them.
Donna De Graaf-Smith is a Gary Indiana steel mill woman. She works for ArcelorMittal, (formerly
Inland Steel) a multi-international company in 37 countries. Her work herstory at the mill reads like a
list of steel mill jobs…Labor/Utility worker, foundry ladle person, Oiler in Mechanical, Pipefitter
Helper, and Millwright helper in Blast Furnaces, Power and Fuels Department, Assistant Operator in
Pump Houses, then Operator, Water Treater in 4 AC power station, Assistant in Recycle Water
treatment. At 80” Hot Strip Mill, worked as Labor, then bander/marker in Rolling sequence. Donna’s
currently, in the Computer Room as a Console Operator. Her job is to oversee 15 monitors that
screen mill production and interface with everyone, mostly Hardware and Software people on a
regular basis. She is also hard at work on a manuscript about her work experience entitled “We Can
Still Do It”.
MY DREAM FOR THE WOMEN THAT WILL FOLLOW ME IN THE TRADES © Donna De Graaf-Smith
Oh, I see changes starting to happen now. Too bad I’m an older woman now. It’s kind of late for me. I just
have a few more years to put in until I’m sixty-two. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, as they say…
In this year, 2013, my company is doing seminars for women. They are addressing and acknowledging
some of the time issues women with children have with careers. They are helping women to be more
assertive in their working lives. I had to learn the hard way, back in 1977, when I walked where no woman
had walked before as a pipefitter helper in the Blast Furnaces.
In my dreams for the future, women are treated as people, judged by the content of their character, not by
their bodies, and looks. We are so much more than a nice ass, or a big rack. Women should not be
objectified as such crude pieces of flesh. We are human beings, with minds and feelings, and much to
contribute to the greater good.
In my future world, there are enough women for none of them to feel they are walking the path alone. There
are a few others so it’s not like living life in a fishbowl, always under observation. The women of the future
don’t feel like they have to prove themselves, and try so very hard to be all they can be.
I dream the testing for jobs qualifications, and abilities are done by the company in the future has an
independent grader, who has no idea whose results they are grading. So, the results can’t be manipulated
by a department, the results are publically published, and given to the person who took the tests. There
will be no more, well, you just missed it by one results given to the woman who took the test. Of course, the
woman has no rights to see her tests, or find out which one she missed. That might compromise the
integrity of the tests, so they say. I want an impartial person to see the real results, and for that person’s
results to be given to all.
In the future, they will be no denial of move-ups based on whims of whoever is in charge of the department.
The one who doesn’t want women in “his department” I KNOW they lied when they told Rosemary she did
not pass the test. When we studied together, she always knew the right answer when I quizzed her. When
both Denise and I allegedly just missed it by one, I knew they lied again. We had studied for months before
taking that test, and we were very well prepared.
In my future dreams, they make and supply gloves small enough to fit a woman’s hand, and to do the job.
They have women’s sizes in the pants the company supplies, women no longer have to wear the pants
made for the men. They have boots in smaller sizes too, no special orders. Women are given their own
locker rooms and bathrooms…and they are no peep-holes anywhere.
In my future dreams, the work instructions no longer say, the man will signal the craneman. They will say,
the person will signal the crane operator.
You see, many years ago, when I took the test for management, (and I may have very well been the first
one who took their tests.) there will be no person telling you that you did surprisingly well on the test, but
“”off the record” “They just aren’t ready for you yet.” Donna De Graaf-Smith 2014
A Well Oiled Machine
© 2014 Joanna Perry-Kujala, Concord CA
Electrician IBEW Local 302
A spark ignites, wheels turn.
Two ideas arcing together kindle a thought.
Possibilities feed the flame and
The two halves of my brain send electrical impulses
Zapping through my system.
Signals shock the nerves and
My body responds to the data it receives.
Lift this arm
Bend that knee
Flex that foot
Clench those muscles
Grab that tool
Pause
Scan vehicle damage and assess current task.
Accessing mental files for data history.
Crack lugs loose
Pump jack handle
Remove nuts (lefty-loosey)
Replace tire
Spin wrench (righty-tighty)
Lower jack
JOB SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED!
Fasten seatbelt
Insert key
A spark ignites, wheels turn...
(Joanna facilitated the 2013 Blue Jean Pocket writers
workshop at the 2013 Women Building CA and the
Nation conference.)
To order 2014 Ironworker calendar go to
www.ironworkergear.com and remember that
Ironworker women get a calendar free from
Jeanne Park (Calendar editor) at
[email protected].
25 have been donated by Jeanne for
Pride and a Paycheck fundraising!
Heads Turn
© Sonya Maloff, Calgary Alberta Canada
Sheet Metal Worker, Apprenticeship Instructor
All eyes on me, new girl on site.
Wonder what trade she is in?
Wonder if she knows what she’s doing.
Tin Basher eh?
Better make sure she can do her job properly.
All eyes are on me.
You know there is a wall going up there?
No shit. I can read a print. Thanks.
Is that duct going to be in my way?
Don’t worry man, I have a plan.
(Something to say about having to prove yourself.)
But when you give your notice to advance in your career…
You can’t leave, you’re my best guy!
Yup, the only guy on site that’s a woman! That’s proof!
Look for another Blue Jean Pocket writer’s workshop at
the 2014 Women Building CA and the Nation conference.
(April 25-27) Sue Doro will be one of the facilitators. For
more conference information go to www.sbctc.org or
www.tradeswomen.org Also watch for a Pride and a
Paycheck table at the conference this year.
Mike Rowe's New Initiative Profoundly Disconnected ...
www.mikeroweworks.com/2013/06/mike-rowes-new-initiative-profoundly-disconne...
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SOMETHING NEW ARRIVING IN MARCH!
Pride and a Paycheck will begin accepting
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PRIDE AND A PAYCHECK 484 Lake Park Avenue, #315, Oakland CA 94610. Sue Doro, Editor.
Email us at [email protected] SEND ARTICLES AND POETRY FOR CONSIDERATION. JOIN OUR
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The Editor is a retired Railroad Machinist and member of the National Writers Union, Local 1981 (UAW Affiliate)
as well as the United Association of Labor Education, Local 189 (Affiliate of CWA), & Working Class Studies
Assoc., and www.railroadworkersunited.org, Tradeswomen, Inc. and NAWIC (National Assoc. of Women in
Construction), the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), retired member of the American Federation of
Government Employees (AFGE) and Intern. Association of Machinists (IAM). Pride and a Paycheck is
produced by the Editor who is responsible for content. Special thanks to the ongoing support of Larry Robbin,
Joycelyn Robbinson-Hughes, Madeline Mixer, Jeanne Park, Joanna Perry-Kujala, Sisters in the Building Trades,
Rita Magner, Pat Williams, Vivian Price, Ellen Voie, Penny Artis, Pat Burnham, Donna De Graaf-Smith, Stella
Cheng, Kate Braid and all the international tradeswomen writers and poets who share their work lives with us
and inspire other sisters to write from their hearts and hard hats!
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