The Story About Equal Pay Day That You Wont Hear About

Today, April 2nd, 2019 is Equal Pay Day and I wanted to share with you something about my business that you probably have never heard about. I have read no less than a half-dozen articles today about the fact that women make eighty cents to every dollar a man makes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleyzalis/2019/04/02/equal-pay-day-2019-how-to-close-the-wage-gap-for-good/

As Business Manager of the Boston Plumbers Union, and a member for over thirty years, I have never known of a woman member that did not get paid what their male counterparts made.

We all went through an apprenticeship together, worked our way up through the business together, became duly licensed by the state together. All the way through apprenticeship and on to becoming a journeyman there was pay parity. Yes, it’s because we belong to a union.

Over those thirty plus years the ranks of women have continued to grow especially over the past ten years. Yes, the pay structure has been around in a male dominated industry for many years but as women have become more and more commonplace in the industry there was never any thought to pay women anything less than what the contract provided or what the men made.

At a recent meeting with some of the women of Local 12 we talked about many issues but the one issue that never came up is pay equity. I was compelled to write this because there is no media outlet that seems to want to let anyone know that parts of the labor movement is paying dividends for all working people.

Needless to say that the Building Trades can be a misunderstood entity at times, we have always tried our best to be sure that its equal pay for equal work. The reasoning being, that we all came into this together trained and moved up together. Pretty basic concept I think.

So on this years Equal Pay Day, for those that find this thing kind of important, not only do the Union Plumbers in the Boston area make the same pay so do all of our counterparts throughout the rest of the Boston Building Trades.

For that, I’m proud.