Women still face harassment on Minnesota job sites

Brian Johnson

BridgeTower Media Newswires

When Laura Larson began working in Minnesota’s construction industry about six years ago, she embraced it as an opportunity to significantly increase her income and provide a better life for her five kids. Her previous job demanded long hours with relatively little pay. Her husband at the time worked in construction.

“I was making $24 an hour, working 12-hour days, busting my butt and never saw my kids. I’d be gone from seven in the morning until eight, nine o’clock at night. He would work eight-hour days and make twice as much as me. … So I decided to give it a shot,” Larson said in an interview.

It wasn’t long, however, before she also experienced the dark side of working in the male-dominated industry.

The first time Larson, a concrete finisher, was sexually harassed on a construction site in Minnesota was in the summer of 2021. At the time, she recalls, a foreman and a finisher on the site refused to train her and subjected her to verbal abuse laced with sexually inappropriate language.

The male foreman and finisher “frequently told the trade superintendent that women are ‘worthless [expletives]’ and they did not want to waste their time training me,” Larson alleged in a recent lawsuit, which has since been settled. Larson said the finisher was terminated after the incident, but the foreman kept his job.

Three years later, in June 2024, Larson alleges she was harassed again by the same foreman. As described in the lawsuit, Larson was bending over doing concrete work when the foreman approached her from behind, kneed her in the back, and caused her to topple over. She hit her head on a wall.

Larson matter-of-factly states that those are just a couple of examples of sexual harassment she endured in her four years with the company, a prominent general contractor in town. Now a mother of six, she was pregnant at the time of one of the incidents, she says.

“They were so incredibly disrespectful to women there,” said Larson, who has since moved on to another company, where she says she’s treated well.

Larson’s story isn’t an outlier. Research shows that sexual harassment is common on job sites in Minnesota and beyond.

A 2021 report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research reveals that 48% of women in the trades believe they are “held to a higher standard than their men co-workers,” and 26.5% say they are “always or frequently harassed just for being a woman.”

In some cases, harassment takes the form of disrespectful language and actions.

In addition to Larson, Finance & Commerce spoke with another woman who has worked for years in Minnesota’s construction industry. The worker, who asked not to be identified by name, said it’s a common thing for females to be treated differently on the job.

At one point, after speaking up about a safety violation on the job, she was called a “snitch bitch,” she says. Another time, when she owned her own company, she attended a construction meeting on a jobsite and the general contractor in charge “told me I needed to be in the office,” not out in the field with the guys.

“It’s a normal, day-to day-thing,” she said.

For her part, Larson said her sexual harassment lawsuit was settled because it was tied to a workers compensation case. Settling the workers comp case was important, she said, because she had medical bills to pay. But the settlement stipulated that she “drop all charges,” including the sexual harassment case.

Most incidents fly under the radar and go unreported, but a handful of the more serious allegations have made the news.

Finance & Commerce reported in March that a former employee sued a Minnesota drywall company, alleging that the company fired her after she reported being sexual harassed and raped on the job. In the lawsuit, Norma Izaguirre alleges that she was fired from her job in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

The Minnesota Department of Human Rights said Izaguirre began working as a laborer for Absolute Drywall in January 2021.

According to the lawsuit, Izaguirre complained to her supervisor, but the supervisor “also engaged inappropriate behavior,” joking among other things that the women hired by the defendant “were his, they all wanted him, and he could take whomever he wanted.”

Taylor Boileau, a former construction superintendent, is fighting back against discrimination and harassment. She’s the founder of The Blueprint for Change, a newly established, Minnesota-based organization dedicated to making construction jobsites safe, respectful and harassment-free for all workers.

Through conferences, toolbox talks, a weekly podcast and more, The Blueprint for Change is on a mission to change the culture of construction “one jobsite at a time.” The organization recently launched a pilot program that offers, among other things, training on worker well-being and safety.

Boileau has personally experienced discrimination. Even though she was in a position of authority, as a superintendent, Boileau wasn’t immune from the sting of harassment.

“I had people text me outside of work. I had people sending me photos. I was worried people were going to follow me home. I’ve had guys touch me inappropriately. It happens,” she said in a recent interview.

“When you look at the discrimination piece, I’ve been told I’m only on the jobsite because I check a box. I’ve been told straight up, ‘I don’t want a woman on my jobsite.’ …

“I’ve talked to many women who are in the trades who have experienced worse than what I have — to being even sexually assaulted on job sites. We like to think it doesn’t happen, because it doesn’t get reported, but that’s just not the case. It’s just not where we are. I wish it were, but it’s not.”

Harassment in the workplace is a “complicated issue,” Boileau says. Part of the problem, she says, is that people who are harassed tend to be “outsiders” already.

“As much as we like to think that construction has come further than it has, it still happens regularly. I know very few women who have not experienced harassment and discrimination, particularly those people in the field,” Boileau said.

Victims of harassment are often afraid to speak up because it increases their sense of alienation.

“If you speak up, you just become further distanced. That was one of my hesitations with speaking up,” Boileau said. “When I was experiencing harassment discrimination I was like, ‘If I speak up, I’m going to be a social pariah, right? No one wants me on their job site already as a woman.’ At least that’s how it felt.”

“There’s a massive fear of that. So I think creating allies out of the men who are in the industry … is a great place to start, and then also providing support for the women who are in the field and letting them know, ‘Hey, we are a resource for you. We will protect you. We’re here for you.’

“I think those are the two pieces that we really need to start focusing on if we want to make a difference.”

Despite the harassment, Larson doesn’t regret the decision to work in construction.

“Where I work now, I haven’t experienced any harassment,” she said. “They have really been good to me and the owner even came to the hospital to check on me after my car accident, and gave my son $50 for his birthday. The guys here have been great.”