Zandra John is a 28-year-old tile union from Flatbush, Brooklyn. But her mother always wanted her to become a teacher.
Three years after earning a high school bachelor’s degree with a minor in English, John was unable to re-enroll in his program because she was late paying tuition. She already owed $ 5,000 in student loans and was earning $ 12 an hour (about $ 25,000 a year) as an assistant professor.
Although she loved working with children and liked the idea of becoming an English teacher or someone with special needs, her job as an assistant teacher had no benefits and she depended on Medicaid and food stamps.
“I love children very much, but I felt that something was missing. I wasn’t really doing what I wanted, ”says John. “And although I wanted to finish school, I knew that $ 12 an hour wouldn’t pay my loans, it wouldn’t help me pay tuition, it really wouldn’t do much, but it would help me survive. So I just went online.”
She searched Google for well-paid papers and found herself looking for construction jobs. She quickly thought of her father.
“My father was a carpenter, he worked at the train stations. And that’s when I really started to fall in love with building things, fixing things around the house. It would always help him. I wanted to pursue a career in this area, but I wasn’t sure I could do it,” he says. John. “It’s a male-dominated field. And generally, they don’t want women there.”
John now earns about $ 32 an hour as a tile laying apprentice. With overtime, she expects to earn about $ 70,000 this year and is working to become a newsboy, who earns up to $ 61 an hour in her union, about $ 126,880 a year.
“Going from $ 12 to $ 32 an hour is a big difference for me,” she says. “I can save more. I can help my mom more.”
Getting a job
John’s first step in construction was to sign up for a free 7-week training program with Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) – a New York-based organization that prepares, trains and places women in careers in specialized construction, public services and maintenance crafts.
“That was really the beginning of a new journey for me. I used to do TA during the day and leave there and go straight to NOVO ”, she recalls.
In June 2018, she graduated from the program and started an eight-week pre-learning program in tile laying that led to an official internship. She says she was attracted to the program because it combined her interest in construction with her artistic hobbies.
“One of the reasons I love tiles is that tiles and art have a connection. Often, when we put tiles, it’s like a mural. We make a lot of murals. We made a flower mural. We made a mural cloud. We made a mural at LaGuardia” , she says. “I love art, so the fact that I can incorporate two things that I love is incredible for me.”
Zandra John mixing cement
A day of work
Of course, John is the first to say that building tile laying is not a relaxing hobby. The job can include long days with difficult and dangerous physical work. She describes an accident in which a pile of bathroom stalls fell on her while she tiled the floor of a bathroom.
She also says that harassment is common.
“They were kind of hard on me the first day, I’m not going to lie. Being the only woman at work, it can sometimes get weird because guys are afraid to say ‘good morning’ or are looking at you,” says John. “Sometimes guys make little comments like, ‘Oh, what made you want to do this? Aren’t you supposed to be home?”
A typical day starts at around 5:45 am. Your ride to Manhattan takes about 40 minutes. João says that she arrives in sight around 6:45 am and work usually starts between 7:00 am and 7:15 am
“When I enter, I start to work. I go to the head of my gang, get my tools, ”she says. “I take my grinder, make sure I have my water, make sure my wet saw is on and get on the scaffold.”
Tasks may include cutting tiles with a saw, mixing “mud” that is used to level floors, laying tiles or grouting between tiles.
The team takes a coffee break at around 9am and a lunch break around noon. The day usually ends around 3 pm, unless the team works overtime, which can go on until night.
Occasionally, work continues over the weekend, which is generally welcome as workers are given overtime.
“Saturday is an hour and a half. Sunday is double. But sometimes they don’t say we’re working over the weekend,” says John. “[Managers] give work to the people they favor or their friends. They do that. So you have to get around it. ”
Your trick to making sure you know about the possible weekend job is to say “see you tomorrow” on Fridays and gauge people’s reactions. Then, it just appears.
“I was working at LaGuardia airport once and they were acting funny,” recalls John. After suspecting that there would be work over the weekend, “I got there [on Saturday] and the foreman was laughing, like ‘Did you really come?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, I’m going! ”
“I will show you”
While John loves to work in construction and enjoys the health and retirement benefits he receives from being part of his union, she says women – and especially women of color – can face challenges at work.
“It is already difficult to be a woman in construction, but also being black in construction is very difficult,” she says. “They draw things in the bathroom. They put things like Trump or things with N-word. Or they draw a monkey or things like that. They even had, when I was at LaGuardia, Nazi things in the bathroom.”
She continues, “Some people really try to make you feel uncomfortable. I don’t understand why.”
John says that she is grateful to have found allies and mentors who supported her during her apprenticeship, and that she has learned to ignore the comments that pass.
“I met some incredible guys at the union. When I’m not working, they pick me up, talk to me, ask if I’m okay or if I need anything, ”she says. “But some guys try to explode your ribs on purpose, just to make you feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, they want you to feel uncomfortable – as if you don’t belong here.”
“But I want to be here, so I’m going to show that I belong here.”
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