MCRAE BUILDS BRICKLAYER CAREER ONE BLOCK AT A TIME At 5-feet, 5-inches tall, and a selfdescribed “girly-girl” who had no construction experience, Amanda McRae is getting used to people not believing her when she says “I’m a bricklayer.” There’s an awkward or amused pause as they seem to wait for a “just kidding.” For those who think she couldn’t or wouldn’t become a bricklayer, she takes pride in showing the hard-hatted jobsite photos. It proves she’s stuck with it through cold days, long, back-aching shifts and shown up early day after day. She’s now wrapping up her third year in the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1 Minnesota/ North Dakota/South Dakota Registered Apprenticeship program. “If I can do it, anyone can do it,” said the mother of three. It isn’t easy work by any means. She’s had to lean on friends and family to help with the kids. Her inner strength, resilience and determination help her through. The desire to provide more for her children and the encouragement of friends who were in the trades led her to visit the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers training center in New Hope. She was thinking about specializing in caulking, but she met the union president and had a job within two weeks as a bricklayer. As a registered bricklayer apprentice she is required to attend training for 144 hours per year for three years and accumulate 6,000 hours of on-the-job training. Other skills, such as reading blueprints, calculating measurements, learning how trowel mortar and grout work, working with a jobsite foreman and more, can be learned through the related technical instruction taught at the training center, workshops and the on-the-job training. The Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers training center also offers a six-week preapprenticeship program each spring to introduce basic skills. McRae started with basic skills ranging from properly swinging a hammer to working safely on scaffolding. She then progressed to the more complex work of calculations for building a wall and making sure measurements were accurate for electricians and other tradespeople that follow the bricklaying team. McRae’s first foreman, Dan Heiland at Magney Construction, was encouraging when she’d feel overwhelmed, and she learned to speak up when she needed help. Heiland would take photos that documented her progress and new skills. “That made me want to keep sticking with it and to keep pushing through,” McRae said. “I proved to myself, ‘I can do this.’” Her most physically demanding job so far has been building 100-foot walls for a new Metro Transit bus garage in north Minneapolis. It required stacking 12-inch blocks rugged enough to resist a fire for three hours. While it has been the toughest job so far, it was also one that allowed her to learn many new skills. She hopes to work as a union representative someday, but for now, she’s dialed in being among the handful of women busting bricklayer stereotypes as she finishes her last registered apprenticeship classes and completes her on-the-job hours to advance to a journeyworker bricklayer. She enjoys pointing out to her kids the buildings she has worked on when they drive through the Twin Cities. On a late-winter Friday, she was heading to her kids’ school where her son was going to be in a classroom circus. He’s one of the smaller kids, but he was portraying the circus strong man—possibly mimicking his mom. “He wants to be a bricklayer,” she said. apprenticeshipmn.com I 443 Lafayette Road N. I St. Paul, MN 55155 I 651-284-5090 I [email protected].u

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