SIIT looks to increase number of women working in skilled trades
- Fraser Needham | March 14, 2015
The Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology (SIIT) wants more women to enter training in one of the province’s biggest growth industries – the skilled trades.
For more than a decade now, industry in the province has struggled to fill vacancies in skilled trades such welding, pipefitting and carpentry.
In spite of high paying salaries, women continue to be resistant to enter what have been historically male dominated professions.
According to SIIT’s numbers, women account for 28 out of 235 positions in its apprenticeship programs or roughly 12 per cent.
The Saskatchewan Apprenticeship and Trade Certification Commission says the most popular apprenticeship trade program for women is hairstylist followed distantly by electrician, cook, carpenter and welder.
The lowest numbers are found in such trades as horticulture technician, locksmith and powerline technician.
Shelley Macnab, the coordinator of the joint training committee at SIIT, says the institution is doing a number of things to ensure more Indigenous people enter and are successful in apprenticeship programs.
This includes the quick-skill or pre-apprenticeship program where those with little or no work experience can apply.
SIIT also manages career centres that have programs directly linked to employment including construction worker preparation, residential renovation and construction and women in trades.
The SIIT-Joint Training Committee is a partnership between the institution and the Saskatchewan Apprenticeship and Trade Certification Commission.
SIIT-JTC acts like an employer indenturing Aboriginal people in the construction trades and allowing apprentices mobility within the industry as they maintain their status as registered apprentices in Saskatchewan.
The career centres also provide job coaches to ensure participants have the greatest chance possible of being successful in their chosen apprenticeship program.
Since 1998, the seven career centres located across the province have registered close to 20,000 people in its programs and found 15,000 jobs for participants.
About 16 per cent of registrants have been female.
Macnab says SIIT is seeing increased female numbers in apprenticeship trade programs but there continues to be a number of reasons why more women are not entering the skilled trades.
“Some of it has to do with the double day for women,” she says. “They have their home to deal with, they have children to deal with, a lot of these jobs require people to be away from home for extended periods of time. The culture is very different for women to fit in and some things haven’t really changed a lot. For many reasons women may start in an apprenticeship and end up dropping out because it’s not a friendly environment.”
She also says the length of time and extensive number of training hours required to become fully certified in a skilled trade can serve as a disincentive to some people.
Most apprenticeship programs consist of about 20 per cent in classroom study time and 80 per cent on the job training.
This means apprentices need to put in thousands of hours on the job in their chosen trade before they are eligible to become fully certified.
Reaching certification and full salary potential can take long as three years.
“It’s a long road, it’s not easy,” Macnab says. “Once you’ve completed your technical training, seven weeks, you go on EI (employment insurance). It’s not easy, especially if you are first year, you are making the least amount you will make your whole career. And so you will go on EI, which is half your salary, and that’s tough especially if you’ve got kids and family.”
She says SIIT would like to see more women like Shannon Burns who is the first woman in the apprenticeship-training program in welding to receive her red seal and become fully certified.
Burns travels back and forth from her home on the Muskoday First Nation and Fort McMurray, Alberta where she can earn as much as $100 per hour working out of her own truck as an independent contractor.
Burns says she toiled away in an administrative job in Prince Albert for a number of years before deciding she needed a change of pace and the potential earning power a skilled trade can bring.
“I worked in administration for 12 years and I found it really hard to get by,” she says. I wasn’t making enough money and I was bored, I hated every minute of it. So I started doing mainline pipeline, cross country pipeline, and I started labouring and did a lot of that for a few years and I was always drawn to the welders.”
She says she is fortunate in the fact that she is not married and does not have children which enables her to be away from home for weeks at a time.
Burns adds she thinks women may also be intimidated by working in trades which continue to be largely male dominated but they might think differently if they were more aware of the money that can be earned and the independence some of these jobs offer.
She says she finds working on her own, outside and in remote areas “empowering.”
And, for the time being, Burns says she is not contemplating a career change any time soon.
“I’m going to do this for as long as I can. Unless I get sick or hurt or something that prevents me from doing it.”
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