Current and former members of IBEW Local 48 gathered July 12-13 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus. Charlye Molden, 80, flew to Portland from Atlanta to attend and see her former coworkers. Molden was the first Black woman to join Local 48. She agreed to share her story and perspective with the Labor Press.
Molden grew up in Oklahoma, where her mother was a beautician and her father did odd jobs. But in the 1970s she was divorced and living in Northeast Portland with two children to feed. Having quit a job at First National Bank, she was looking for work when she ran into someone she knew at the Urban League, a civil rights organization.
“He says, ‘Hey, Charlye, I’m recruiting women and minorities into the trades. How about you come in to talk about it?’
“I didn’t know what it was all about,” Molden recalls. “All I knew is I needed a job.”
When she visited the Urban League office, he explained that she’d have to go through a four-year apprenticeship program and attend school at night, but she’d be earning money as she trained.
“When he said that, I says ‘I’m ready. When do I start?’”
To help their recruits succeed, the Urban League had tutors, including a math teacher and a retired engineer from the Bonneville Power Administration.
Molden was dispatched to work at EC Electric pulling wire in a commercial building. Some of the journeymen she worked with were easy to get along with. One in particular, Dick, was like a father figure, watching out for her and helping to train her.
“And then there were some, they weren’t gonna get along with you no matter what,” Molden said.
An older journeyman named Jim was especially difficult, not just with her but with others, and she says for some reason she always got assigned to work with him.
“Women shouldn’t be in the trades,” he would tell her every day. “Women should be at home.”
Molden took all that in stride. She observed him closely on the job, learning everything she could about the trade.
“One day I said, ‘Jim, I’m here just like you, to make money and pay some bills. So let’s get along.”
Later, there came a time when there weren’t enough jobs to go around, and Local 48 members were being laid off. Molden applied to work in another IBEW local’s jurisdiction — in Manhattan.
“When I got ready to transfer to New York, Jim came over to me and said, ‘Charlye, I’m going to miss you.’” Molden recalls. “I almost fainted.”
Leaving the kids with her mother, Molden worked for over a year as a traveler in New York City. Eventually, given a continued need to work as a traveler, she felt her older daughter needed her as a parent, and left the trade to move back to Oklahoma.
But she says she has no regrets. And today she’s receiving benefits from the electrical workers pension for the years she worked.
“Hopefully the women that’s coming into the trade, they won’t let the least little thing upset them, and be of service when they go on the job,” Molden said, reflecting on her time in IBEW. “The main thing is you just got to keep an open mind, and don’t get offended about everything that’s on the job.”
