Kim A. Pierce, a former Iron Worker Union member, construction safety professional and author of The Hands That Built This: Restoring Respect and Rebuilding the Future of the Trades, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast for Trades Day to discuss her path from the ironworker apprenticeship to construction safety and to the book she wrote in six weeks while working a job in Puerto Rico.
Pierce joined Ironworkers Local 454 out of Casper, Wyo., nearly 30 years ago, passed her journeyman exam with a 98 percent score and spent years booming across the United States before returning to school in 2004. She graduated from Indiana University in 2008 with a degree in safety and has worked for the same safety firm for more than 18 years. Her book addresses multiple topics, including the shortage of building trades members as an economic crisis rather than a construction industry problem and the disappearance of shop classes from American high schools. She also wrote about the experience of women in the trades, mental health and suicide on construction jobsites and the urgent need to rebuild a culture of respect for skilled trades work.
A member of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), Pierce has been working with girls and young women through mentoring programs to demystify the tools and careers of the trades.
If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, call or text 988.
Kim Pierce came to the ironworkers the way she came to most things in her life: directly and on her own terms. She had spent years working construction with her father and brother — carpentry, home building, remodeling — and was serving as president of their small company when a relationship took her away from Minnesota, and she dissolved the business. She was working as a laborer on a composite crew in Rapid City, S.D., when she zeroed in on the business agent from Ironworkers Local 454 out of Casper, Wyo., who kept appearing on the job. She said she found him at a bar one night after work and told him she wanted in.
The relationship that followed was, by her description, a love-hate one. The union gave her credit for her existing construction experience, and as long as she attended meetings and monthly classes, she was eligible to sit for the journeyman ironworker exam that December. She passed with a 98 percent.
Pierce boomed across the United States with Local 454 until 2001, then transferred her book to Local 439 in Terre Haute, Ind., which was later absorbed by Local 22 in Indianapolis, where she pushed crews and read bridge prints for rebar. However, the physical toll of the trade was too much, as her back and knees gave out. In 2004, she went back to school, initially planning to study labor relations to stay connected to construction. A professor changed her direction: with your background coming up through the trades, she was told, you could really bring something to the safety profession. Pierce switched her major to safety, graduated from Indiana University in 2008 and was hired by a local safety firm within months. She has been there for more than 18 years.
Pierce described what it was like to usually be the only female ironworker on a jobsite. The reception was typically one of skepticism: quiet, watching, waiting to see what she could do. The respect came when she demonstrated something tangible. She recalled being in an aerial lift with a Brother ironworker doing sheeting, work she knew well from years of siding and sheeting houses. Her knowledge of the work was evident. After that job, she said, he had genuine respect for her. The fact that they were stuck together in a basket for 10 hours a day helped accelerate the process.
Not every experience was like that, however. When she boomed out to Indianapolis, the foreman was told in advance she was coming and developed a negative attitude about her before she arrived. She traced it back to the Local Union office and said it still irked her. She described the Terre Haute business agent, by contrast, as fantastic — someone who sent her on jobs because he knew she could do the work and never treated her differently for being a woman.
Pierce recalled how she never heard anything about the trades from a school counselor. She only knew construction existed because she grew up in it. She started noticing the disappearance of shop classes in the late 1990s when her daughter was in school and reported that woodworking, metal shop, auto shop and architectural drawing were all gone. Home economics was lost as well.
She believes the eliminations were driven by liability concerns, as teachers feared being sued if a student got hurt, and instructors no longer wanted to teach the courses. However, getting rid of the classes entirely did a profound disservice to an entire generation of kids who had no family connection to the trades and no other way to discover them, she said. Those are exactly the students the trades need to reach. They are also the students who could benefit most from a pathway that offers a living wage, a pension and health insurance with no student debt.
She framed the skilled trades shortage as an economic issue, not a construction industry problem. There are people across the country on subsistence assistance programs who are fully capable of working in a trade. If those people were in Registered Apprenticeship Programs earning a living wage, they would not need those programs. They would be spending money in their communities. They would be contributing to the tax base. She stated the country would be in better shape. The 400-plus Registered Apprenticeship Programs across all industries, including nursing, which has its own apprenticeship pathway, are options most people do not know exist.
Pierce is a member of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) and participates in mentoring programs aimed at girls and young teens to demystify tools and trade careers. Her message is simple: the tools are not scary; we can show you how to use them safely, and this is a viable first career, not a fallback.
She dedicated a chapter of her book to the sisterhood of women in construction, including an excerpt from a friend who was a welder out of Ironworkers Local 377 in San Francisco — a local with a significant contingent of women, most of them welders. Pierce said the guys on that job openly acknowledged that women tend to be more meticulous welders. They are not in a hurry, and do it right the first time.
She said women who are single mothers with older children in particular should consider the trades. Health insurance, a pension and a living wage are exactly what that situation requires. Getting that message to the right people, she said, requires showing up where those people are.
Pierce described a near-total silence of the mental health culture within construction when she was in the trades. Alcoholism and drug use were prevalent. Nobody said they were not feeling it today. You either knew the people you worked with well enough to read them or you did not.
She has dealt with mental health challenges herself. The workers on her own job noticed it before she fully acknowledged what was happening, as she would be fine for stretches and then suddenly snap. When she finally sought help, it made a difference. Pierce said she speaks about it openly now because she knows how much it matters for someone in the trades to hear that it is OK to not be OK.
The construction industry suicide rates have increased. Pierce identified traveling workers as particularly vulnerable. When you boom to a large project such as a data center, hospital or industrial facility, you may be away from your family indefinitely. You are paying for housing in two places, working six tens or seven twelves, and the fatigue accumulates. If something is wrong at home, it does not stop being wrong because you are three states away and you cannot talk about it. She said the people best positioned to catch those signals are the jobsite managers and foremen who work alongside these workers every day and know when something is off.
She lost a friend on a jobsite over 25 years ago. Her friend was an ironworker, whom she had shared drinks with the night before. Pierce recalled how the accident was sudden and horrible. She said the industry has gotten better at providing grief resources and making clear that help is available, but the work is not finished.
The book came together fast. Pierce was on a job in Puerto Rico with a large window in front of her desk and time to think. She recalled Mike Rowe's push for signing days for teenagers entering pre-apprenticeship programs. His idea was to treat the decision to join a trade the same way high school athletes celebrate a college commitment, and it planted the seed. Within the first week, she had the outline, the premise of every chapter and three chapters written. By the end of six weeks in Puerto Rico, she had the whole book.
Her goals are concrete. She wants parents to have the conversation with their kids. She wants school districts to stop treating the trades as a fallback and start connecting with the building trades community. She wants the foremen and journeymen she works with on jobsites to ask their own kids whether they have considered the trades. She wants more women to know they belong there. Pierce also wants the culture of respect for skilled work, for the people who build the hospitals, data centers, bridges and homes that the rest of the economy depends on, to be restored.
The back cover of her book states it directly. She wrote: “For too long, the trades have been treated like a fallback, something you choose when college does not work out. The truth is the world runs on the backs of builders, welders, riggers, electricians and laborers. It is time to start acting like it.”
More information on Kim Pierce and The Hands That Built This is available at kapiercebooks.com.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988.
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