“ Although I would show up to his basketball games covered in concrete dust , my son was always proud of me and the kind of work I did , which kept me going .”
- Juanita Douglas
WOMEN OF THE ALAMEDA COUNTY PS / CBA : JUANITA DOUGLAS
“ Although I would show up to his basketball games covered in concrete dust , my son was always proud of me and the kind of work I did , which kept me going .”
- Juanita Douglas
when I entered the construction field .” Although initially , a few “ alpha males ” on the crew tried to denigrate and intimidate her , Juanita immediately made it clear that she would not put up with that kind of behavior . “ I basically told them , ‘ Don ’ t talk crazy to me because I will mess you up bad .’ One of the advantages of being on the job site was that I could get away with that because that ’ s how they talked to each other . Once they realized that I was not going to tolerate any disrespect , they actually became very protective of me .”
On one project , the superintendent laid her off every Friday for two years just because he disliked her , but every Monday , the company owner and HR rep hired her back because of her outstanding skills and work ethic . None of the obstacles that anyone tried to put in Juanita ’ s way were going to dissuade her – she ’ d fallen in love with the fast-paced flow of on-site work and was earning enough to provide a better standard of living for herself and her son . “ Although I would show up to his basketball games covered in concrete dust , my son was always proud of me and the kind of work I did , which kept me going .”
When the General Mail Facility project ended , Juanita spent several years working on a 13-story Travis Air Force Hospital construction project at Travis Air Force Base , where she learned how to read blueprints . “ I was paired with a guy who ’ d been going through apprentices like crazy because he was so mean . He spat out numbers and I wrote them down as fast I could , then called them back to him and helped him snap the chalk lines [ to lay out the walls on the plans in preparation for construction ].” When he saw that Juanita was paying attention , he became willing to teach her and she started taking blueprints home to study them . “ Learning this skill really saved me ,” she notes , “ because knowing how to read blueprints makes you very important on the job site and the company will pay to keep you .” This became her focus and , after journeying out in 1987 , she was hired as a construction foreman in 1988 .
Juanita never again experienced any issues securing work , but she avoided climbing the ladder to higher construction management positions because , as she puts it , “ Interacting with management felt like playing in the sandbox with a bunch of two-year olds who were constantly fighting .” Being a construction foreman took her to Los Angeles from 1989 until 1997 , when she returned to the Bay Area . While working on a Kaiser Medical Project , an employer
FIRST QUARTER 2024 CTAP CONTRACTOR REPORT - 09