The number of women interested in the trades may be surging, as we reported earlier this month, but funding to help them get ready is drying up.
A budget crisis at the City of Portland and Multnomah County has contributed to a half million dollar hole in Oregon Tradeswomen’s annual budget of $2.1 million, says Nami Bigos, the group’s deputy director. Oregon Tradeswomen recruits and provides basic training to get women ready for apprenticeship programs in construction and other fields.
In June Oregon Tradeswomen learned it would lose $210,000 in city funding and $110,000 in county funding; meanwhile, a Department of Energy grant remains on hold more than a year after it was frozen by the Trump Administration’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On July 9, Oregon Tradeswomen responded by laying off three of its 17 staff effective Aug. 1 and reducing the hours of four others.
The layoffs hit both of the union stewards at the non-profit. Machinists Local 63 has represented the group’s 12 workers since 2023, but the departure of instructor Debbie Spickerman and communications and marketing manager Trytten Essing leaves no stewards remaining. Essing was also the organization’s most senior staffperson.
Oregon Tradeswomen isn’t the only pre-apprenticeship training program bleeding red ink. Workforce training budget cuts are also hitting Portland Youthbuilders, which recruits low-income young people, and Constructing Hope, which recruits formerly incarcerated individuals and low-income adults (people of color were formerly on Constructing Hope’s list of intended beneficiaries, but that phrase was scrubbed from its website after the Trump administration began terminating federal funding for programs that use race- and sex-based preferences.)
All three of those Portland-area pre-apprenticeship training groups get funding through Worksystems Inc., a workforce nonprofit that dispenses funds from the City of Portland’s Community Construction Training Program. Worksystems is facing its own 20% budget cut and on July 9 laid off its longtime chief program officer, Patrick Gihring. The City pre-apprenticeship funds come from a city ordinance that sets aside 1% of the budget of all City public improvement contracts.
