Taylor Dobson, a 26-year-old native of Joliet, Ill., and first-year carpenter apprentice with Carpenters Union Local 174 in Chicago, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to share her story, which is becoming more common. It involves a young worker leaving dead-end service industry jobs to start a union career in the skilled trades.
Dobson described her path from fast-food work to carpenter apprentice, the nine-week Hire360 pre-apprenticeship program that made the transition possible, and what her first months have looked like working on a solar farm project with Power Circle Construction. Her message to anyone considering a similar move, especially to other women, was that the work is hard, the opportunity is real and the only thing holding most people back is themselves.
Taylor Dobson always knew she wanted to work with her hands. She loved building things, loved looking at finished work, and knowing she made it. What she did not know, for years, was how to get from where she was to where she wanted to be. So she stayed in fast food, moved from job to job trying to find something better. She became a shift lead with an assistant manager track in front of her, but realized she needed to get out before the track became a rut.
The problem was not a lack of interest in the trades. It was a lack of information. She had no idea how to apply to a union, who to talk to or when application windows opened. Dobson described the process as opaque by design. It seemed like unions accepted applications without public notification, and the windows close quickly. Without the right connections, breaking through felt impossible, she said.
Hire360, a pre-apprenticeship program operating in the Chicago area, closed that gap for Dobson. She applied, was accepted fairly quickly and enrolled in a nine-week paid program that covered aptitude test preparation, tours of local union training facilities and conversations with working tradespeople about what life on the job actually looks like. The program assigned her a case manager who tracked her trade interests, monitored which Local Unions were accepting applications, and positioned her to move when an opportunity arose.
Dobson said the program also prepared her for the cultural realities of jobsite environments, devoting specific sessions to what workers encounter and what to expect from colleagues. When she eventually walked onto her first job site, she said she was ready for a variety of situations because the program had prepared her in advance.
Dobson also discussed her entry into Local 174, which did not follow the standard application path. Her case manager presented an opportunity directly. The call came on a Friday, telling her to be at the union hall on Monday morning. She went. When she sat down and read through the benefits package, she described the pension alone as something she had to read twice to believe. The contrast to her fast food jobs, where employers offered no meaningful benefits and expressed more interest in her hours than in her future, was immediate and stark.
Dobson's first major assignment has been a solar farm project in a former cornfield, working with Power Circle Construction as part of a crew of Local 174 members. The work in the early weeks involved measuring and marking hundreds of piles being driven into the ground across a large field, installing pile caps and assembling components. As the project progressed, the work became more physically demanding, with the crew moving into tubing installation, leveling and structural assembly, she said.
She described it as the kind of work where the scale is almost hard to grasp until you are standing in the middle of it. The job ran for three to four months and wrapped up recently. Her employer told her early on that he valued her work ethic and asked whether she wanted to join the next project, another solar installation in Barrington. She said yes.
Dobson was candid about the culture that exists on job sites and equally candid that it did not stop her. She acknowledged that walking onto a site as one of the only women can feel intimidating and that the environment can be rough around the edges. But her experience has been that hard work earns respect regardless of who is doing it, she said. If you show up, do the work and give your full effort, there will always be room for you.
She also addressed the question of maternity leave and family planning directly, noting it is a legitimate concern that more unions are working to address as women enter the trades in larger numbers. Her advice to any woman who might let that uncertainty hold her back was not to. The union difference in benefits and protections, she said, extends to how members are treated in situations that matter most.
To anyone still working a dead-end job and wondering whether a union job is accessible, Dobson's answer is simple: they are, and Hire360 at hire360chicago.com is a real way in.
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