diff --git a/jenkins_jobs/builder.py b/jenkins_jobs/builder.py
index bb2ae6e89..7beab9400 100644
--- a/jenkins_jobs/builder.py
+++ b/jenkins_jobs/builder.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ import logging
 import os
 from pprint import pformat
 import re
+from six.moves.urllib.parse import quote
 import time
 import xml.etree.ElementTree as XML
 
@@ -116,7 +117,8 @@ class JenkinsManager(object):
         # returns job name or url based on config option
         if self._jjb_config.builder['print_job_urls']:
             return self._jjb_config.jenkins['url'] + \
-                '/job/' + '/job/'.join(job_name.split('/')) + '/'
+                '/job/' + quote(
+                    '/job/'.join(job_name.split('/')).encode('utf8')) + '/'
         else:
             return job_name
 
diff --git a/jenkins_jobs/cli/entry.py b/jenkins_jobs/cli/entry.py
index 62e7b804e..7ba9618b4 100644
--- a/jenkins_jobs/cli/entry.py
+++ b/jenkins_jobs/cli/entry.py
@@ -17,7 +17,6 @@ import io
 import os
 import logging
 import platform
-import sys
 
 from stevedore import extension
 import yaml
@@ -141,6 +140,18 @@ class JenkinsJobs(object):
 
 
 def main():
+
+    # utf-8 workaround for avoiding unicode errors in stdout/stderr
+    # see https://stackoverflow.com/a/2001767/99834
+    import codecs
+    import sys
+
+    reload(sys)
+    sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
+    sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stdout)
+    sys.stderr = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stderr)
+    # end of workaround
+
     argv = sys.argv[1:]
     jjb = JenkinsJobs(argv)
     jjb.execute()