The government is looking at ways to make sure women are able to take advantage of a Gov. Michelle Lujan executive order that seeks to increase training for climate-ready jobs.
The governor’s executive order last month mandates that by the end of 2026, New Mexico has 2,000 workers trained for climate-ready jobs. In her order, Lujan Grisham said that billion-dollar investments by both the federal and state have led to a strain because “the rate and pace of infrastructure investments across New Mexico is straining the existing workforce and inflating construction costs.”
She is requiring multiple agencies to try to address the worker shortage with grant funding to enable retraining for climate-ready jobs. The retraining can be for a variety of occupations, Secretary of Workforce Solutions Narita Sair told NM Political Report. Because the jobs largely involve manual labor and do not require a college degree, they are often thought of as jobs for men but Marcela Diaz, founding executive director of an economic justice organization called Somos Un Pueblo Unido, told NM Political Report that an estimated 15 percent of workers in the oil and gas industry in New Mexico are women.
She said some women work as welders in the Permian Basin in southeast New Mexico. She said other women work in the industry in other ways, such as in bookkeeping, as managers, in maintenance and cleaning.
“There are many different roles women have in the industry,” Diaz said.
Nair acknowledged that one key to encouraging more women to go into trade jobs is by helping them obtain childcare. Nair said DWS already has a process in place that when individuals visit the New Mexico Health Care Authority to apply for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the individuals are then routed to visit DWS for work training programs.
“We automatically see if they’re eligible for free childcare and enroll them through that system in the Early Childcare Education and Care Department,” Nair said.
She said that if the individual needs case management or transportation, many of the department’s programs provide resources to aid with that.
She said women can be successful in trade job careers.
“It’s not just a man’s world,” she said.
Nair said the salaries in trade positions can really vary but that $60,000 annually is a good average.
Nair said climate-ready jobs can mean prevention, and that includes jobs in the clean-energy sector to “stop the train of climate change.” It can also mean forest management to make more use of water efficiencies as the state continues to experience ongoing drought conditions. It can also mean wildland forest fire fighting, she said.
Nair said the recent forest fires and flooding that occurred in the Ruidoso area this past summer provides an example of what a climate-ready job could mean. She said the flooding washed out many bridges, especially what she called “unofficial” bridges built by two property owners. Those types of privately built bridges were not built to withstand the volume of debris that came with the flash flooding.
“That’s another example of what’s now going to be response activities now we know that happens,” she said.
The executive order calls directly for prioritizing equity in the workforce to expand opportunities for all workers, “particularly those from rural, underrepresented and/or underserved communities and those disproportionately impacted by climate change and the energy transition,” Nair said the next step is to understand what that means, specifically.
Diaz said the oil and gas economy in the state is heavily supported by immigrant workers. But a report provided by DWS and published in 2021, found that 88.5 percent of oil, gas and mining workers are white. Nair said DWS knows its data is underrepresenting undocumented workers. She said undocumented workers often work as independent contractors because that provides a legal way to perform the work and receive payment but, as independent contractors, they don’t appear in company wage records. Nair said DWS works with Somos Un Pueblo Unido to better understand a sometimes invisible demographic.
Diaz said Somos Un Pueblo Unido estimates that 43 percent of energy workers are Latino. She said there is a real opportunity for these workers to transfer their skills for climate-ready jobs. She said a recent survey found that 78 percent of these workers don’t want their children to follow them into the oil and gas industry because the work is dangerous and not sustainable. The work can also lead to health issues and many work long hours.
Diaz said Somos Un Pueblo Unido is trying to ensure that “difficult to reach workers,” such as women, low-wage workers and immigrants can access higher quality jobs and better paying jobs by accessing the state’s job training and adult education programs.
Nair said one of the things the agency has learned is that undocumented oil and gas workers need mobile training units staffed with trainers who can offer lessons in the workers’ first languages and at times of the day when the workers can attend.
Diaz said many oil and gas workers would like to retrain for other jobs and other industries but often work long hours and lack English language skills and that both factors can become a deterrent. She said many who migrated to the Permian Basin also want industry and retraining investments to come to their community.
“Climate disasters are often what brought them here. They don’t want to be displaced again,” she said.
Diaz said one undocumented worker in Hobbs told her he spent 10 years in the oil and gas industry while learning English and learning new job skills so he could transition out of the industry but that it took so long because he had to do it all while working long shifts. Diaz said adult education classes and worker training that takes into account social and structural barriers are needed to help workers accelerate the retraining process.