Robinson helps build sisterhood at IBEW

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Michele Robinson would probably have gotten her start in the trades sooner if hadn’t been for a teacher’s doubtlessly well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive intervention.

In her senior year at Riverside High School in Milwaukee – and after she had completed many of the AP classes she needed to prepare for college – she managed to get herself enrolled in a shop class. But although she had long wanted develop her interest in hands-on work, this particular opportunity wasn’t to last.

On the first day of the semester, a teacher walked by and saw her in the classroom. Declaring that shop was meant for “dumb kids,” the teacher pulled Robinson out and quickly set her to work helping her grade papers. It took Robinson more than 10 years to recognize that shop class is probably where she actually belonged.

Instead of entering an apprenticeship immediately after high school, Robinson took her teachers’ advice and went to college. Following graduation, she held down a customer-service position at a local bookseller for a number of years until she lost her job as a result of the 2008 recession.

An aptitude test she took around the same time revealed that she might enjoy working on her feet more than sitting all day at a desk. At the age of 30, she signed up for an apprenticeship.

Robinson said she has never had reason to regret that decision. The only thing she might do differently if she could would be to get an earlier start.

“I don’t regret my education, because that’s something they can’t take away from you. It’s yours and it’s locked in your mind,” she says. “But I think people don’t realize how they can stifle someone’s dreams or goals.”

Making the construction industry more welcoming to women, she says, will also largely be about adopting new attitudes and preconceptions. She is helping to bring about that needed change through her work with the Local 494 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. That has included the formation of a “sisterhood committee” that specifically looks at ways to bring more women into the trades and help them succeed once they are there.

Her fellow Local 494 member, Christopher Terry, said he’s impressed at how Robinson manages to do her work and win the respect of others without having to give away too much through compromise.

“Sometimes if you are the outlier, you want to make everyone else feel comfortable,” he says. “You think: I’m the one who has to adjust. I’m the one who has to fit in.”