Plumbers: "A Ticket to Ride"

Women who wanted to join Manhattan-based Plumbers’ Local 2—United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada (UA)—faced the usual discrimination and harassment, but they also confronted one of the most notoriously corrupt locals in New York City.

“As far as anyone remembers, plumbers in New York City metro area could never boast of a fair referral system out of a union hiring hall,” according to the Union Democracy Review. “Contractors can hire or reject any dues payer as they please, a system which allows employers and union business agents to put whomever they want on the best jobs without worrying about annoying contractual and legal obligations.”

The above statement was published in 2006, a decade after top officials of the plumbers’ union were convicted on federal charges of bribery and extortion—and two decades after women first tried to join Local 2.

During the late 1970s and 1980s anyone wanting to join Local 2 took one of two paths: the traditional apprenticeship or a state-sponsored trainee program designed for women and minorities. In the late 1970s Kay Webster tried both approaches unsuccessfully. She appealed to the city’s Human Rights Commission, and achieved a victory; nevertheless, she chose to work as nonunion plumber for 14 years. Elaine Ward completed the apprenticeship and received her union card but soon ran up against the union’s unfair referral system. Blacklisted, she nevertheless made the system work for her. She became a “boomer,” a traveling journeyman who uses a network of locals to find jobs around the country. Later she established a plumbing business as a sole proprietor.

UA Local 2 no longer exists. After a period of trusteeship, it was dissolved and folded into Local 1, but problems persist. The number of women in the local remains low—about one percent of its members—but some progress has been made since Ward and Webster bravely took their pioneering steps. Their stories are a testament to courage, persistence, and adaptability.