Women's Conference about future market share!
NOTE: The women's conference was held in October, 2011.More than 100 female members attended. It was an unqualified success. Congratulations Brandi and Crystal!
Attending a Sisters in the Brotherhood convention in 2010, Brandi Thorne suddenly realized just how critical it is that the union becomes more competitive.
And that realization translated into the reason why she is working so darn hard these days to organize the 2011 Alberta Regional Council Women’s Conference in Edmonton October 29 and 30.
“The top brass in the union kept talking about how the generation that’s coming along behind the Boomers is a lot smaller than the Boomer generation that’s starting to retire in big numbers right now.
“Not only that, but there are so many new kinds of jobs in the technology and scientific sectors that are competing for young people’s attention these days.”
Add it up, says Brandi, a 37-year-old maintenance scaffolder for Safway at the Scotford Refinery, and it spells a real big headache for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters if the union wants to recruit new people to fill the shoes of retiring members.
If the union can recruit successfully, it can retain and maybe even grow its market share, says Brandi.
But successful recruiting these days means looking for apprentices in many non-traditional ‘places’.
“The biggest pool of untapped recruits for our union is women,” she says. “Women make great scaffolders. In fact a woman was first-place winner in the recent Alberta provincial scaffolding contest.”
Having got the message loud and clear from the union’s leaders in Las Vegas, Brandi wasn’t very hard to convince when Executive Secretary-Treasurer Martyn Piper asked her to organize the 2011 Women’s Conference.
“I’ve always believed in being involved in the union; my interest has been in discussing union issues from a woman’s perspective.
“The union has to recruit from ALL under-represented groups in order to maintain its membership levels and to make sure the new people are trained by the time the experienced generation has retired.
“Organizing the conference (with right-hand woman and fellow Sister Crystal Bowen) has been an amazing amount of work, but it’s for a really important purpose.
“It’s a whole weekend where women members can come together and share ideas about women in the workplace and in the union. They’ll meet and talk with one another, and hopefully they’ll return home determined to recruit more women into the union,” she says.
The conference is being fully supported financially by the Regional Council, including transportation, hotel, meals and conference fees. There’s an upper limit on registration numbers, so interested members should register soon! Registration deadline is August 31!
Brandi has managed to balance her conference chair status with her full-time job, her household and family responsibilities (mom to a 14-year-old, wife to a fellow scaffolder).
“It’s an enormous amount of work, but it’s so important,” she says. “That’s why the key players in the union – like (General President) Douglas McCarron, (Canadian VP) Jim Smith and Martyn Piper have noticed, and why they’re so supportive,” she says.
Conference keynote speakers now include the head of the United Nurses of Alberta Heather Smith, widely-respected Ontario drywall contractor Elem Rinomato and Lynn Zeidler, Vice President of Canadian Natural Resources Limited.
