Statement by Canada’s Building Trades Unions on International Women’s Day • Canada’s Building Trades Unions

“On March 8, Canada’s Building Trades Unions join organizations and people across the world to mark International Women’s Day – a yearly reminder to address inequality in our country, and in our industry.

I am proud of the many sisters that go to work in demanding jobs to build Canada each and every day. And, through various programs, we’re working hard to make every job site inclusive of all. Including:

• The Office to Advance Women Apprentices. OAWA offer wraparound support services for women seeking or already employed in the skilled trades.
• For tradeswomen, programs like Build Together: Women of the Building Trades have created a way for tradeswomen in our industry to help uncover existing biases so we can work harder to address them.
• Build Together and our partnership with the Lean In Foundation have created networking opportunities, supports and mentorship which are an integral part of retaining women in the skilled trades.
• In the Trades that offers financial incentives to small and medium-sized union contractors to hire first-year apprentices. That incentive is doubled when the apprentice is a woman, or from an equity-deserving group.

International Women’s Day should remind us all that there’s still a lot of work to do, to make every job, job site and industry open to women and we all play a role to ensure supports are in place to increase the success of women in the construction industry. The skilled trades and Canada will be better for it.”

– Sean Strickland, Executive Director of Canada’s Building Trades Unions

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 Media Contact

Kate Walsh  kwalsh@buildingtrades.ca 613.298.0652

About CBTU

Canada’s Building Trades Unions are an alliance of 14 international unions in the construction, maintenance and fabrication industries that collectively represent over 600,000 skilled trades workers in Canada. Each year, our unions and our signatory contractor partners invest over $300 million in private sector money to fund and operate over 195 apprenticeship training and education facilities across Canada that produce the safest, most highly trained and productive skilled craft workers found anywhere in the world. Canada’s Building Trades Unions represent members who work in more than 60 different trades and occupations, and generate six per cent of Canada’s GDP. For more information, go to www.buildingtrades.ca