As morning rush hour traffic creeps across the I-205 Abernethy Bridge, Ashley Lautenschlager is under the bridge on a scaffold above the Willamette River, installing post-tension cables. Coming home dirty and exhausted from a hard day’s work, she says, feels good.
“My whole life, I’ve been pretty much a hustler and a go-getter,” Lautenschlager told the Labor Press. “I’d just been putting my energy and my focus into the wrong things — like criminal activities.”
Lautenschlager was serving the final months of a sentence at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon’s women’s prison, when a new road opened up for her. She signed up for the Union Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Training program (U-PACT) and graduated in March 2024. Run by Ironworkers Local 29, Cement Masons Local 555, and Bricklayers Local 1, U-PACT had become what inmates all over Coffee Creek were talking about after the first cohort graduated in 2023, Lautenschlager said.
“As soon as I heard about it, I took it as, ‘This is my way to make something of my life…. This is my opportunity to turn my life around and to show everybody that I’m not just a lost cause,” she said.
Lautenschlager had been sentenced to six years for theft and drug charges but was released early for good behavior.
She tried other Coffee Creek offerings, like cosmetology and welding, but nothing offered the support and career path that the union pre-apprenticeship program did. The 12-week program covered construction basics and introduced trainees to ironworking, cement masonry, and bricklaying.
Lautenschlager was released from Coffee Creek on July 5, 2024. A week later, she got her book number, making her an official Ironworkers Local 29 apprentice. A few days later, she was sent out to her first dispatch, helping construct a low-income apartment building in Portland’s Central Eastside.
The wages, benefits, apprenticeship model, and the work itself pulled Lautenschlager to Local 29, but U-PACT also taught her about the solidarity among union members.
Lautenschlager said before she went to prison, her social circle included people who were making the same destructive choices she was making. Turning her life around meant she had to cut ties to those friends.
But in the union, she found a positive group of people and made new friends.
“I have a whole union of people behind me if I need support,” she said.
On Abernethy Bridge, Lautenschlager’s work will help the bridge withstand a major earthquake. Cables and ducts are laid out before concrete is poured, and post-tension cables are tightened afterward. Crews lay out the steel cables in precisely shaped ducts, pour concrete on top, then stretch the cables and anchor them at each end. The stretched cables counteract forces on the concrete that make it prone to cracking.
On that job, Lautenschlager is part of a crew of two journeymen and two apprentices working for Schwager Davis, a contractor specializing in bridge construction and post-tensioning. When her crew’s post-tension work was on pause for a few weeks, a rebar crew working for Camblin Steel brought Lautenschlager over to help out.
At 39, Lautenschlager is older than most of her fellow apprentices. She’s also one of just about 2% nationally of Ironworkers who are women. But having grown up around brothers and male cousins — and as a self-proclaimed smack-talker — she wasn’t deterred by warnings that men on her jobsites might give her a hard time.
“You’ve just got to put them in their place real quick,” Lautenschlager said.
With three more years as an apprentice ahead of her, Lautenschlager is excited to attend classes and explore other areas of ironworking, like structural work, which includes building the steel frames of buildings.
In July, Lautenschlager marked one year since her release from prison — and one year as an apprentice.
The five years passed slowly at Coffee Creek. Though she tried to keep busy, she said her accomplishments in those five years were nothing compared to what she’s done in the past year.
“I do love that at work, nobody cares about my past, nobody cares about what I’ve been through. As long as I show up every day with a positive attitude and ready to work, that’s all that matters,” Lautenschlager said.
Keeping a job and staying out of trouble would be accomplishments of their own after a prison sentence, but Lautenschlager hasn’t stopped there. She’s visited Coffee Creek and South Fork Forest Camp, a men’s prison work camp, to attend U-PACT graduations and as a guest speaker. She also received a scholarship to attend the Tradeswomen Build Nations conference in September — a trip she must get approved by her parole officer.
Lautenschlager’s visits to Coffee Creek have created hope for women currently incarcerated, said Ironworkers Local 29 Political Director Lorne Bulling.
“It’s been incredibly cool to see her grow as a person and really thrive when she’s gotten out to the field. She’s got an incredible work ethic, for one. She always shows up. She’s more than willing to volunteer her time,” Bulling said.
Lautenschlager also joined Local 29’s Sisters of Iron committee and the union’s political action committee. The past year has been a crash course in politics for Lautenschlager, who had never voted before. Earlier this year she testified in front of state legislators in support of more funding for the Department of Corrections.
“I feel like now I have something positive to focus on, and I’m just taking it and running with it,” Lautenschlager said. “Sky’s the limit.”
