A Message from Business Manager Chris Erikson
A lot is going on these days. The gears are all meshing. It’s not perfect, but it’s moving in the right direction. Contracts are done, the work opportunity is increasing, and we are in the game. It’s rewarding when we are awarded big jobs like the one SJ Electric just got — a 60-story superstructure core and shell and the fit out from a developer that has been giving his work to open shop and usually not to us. Every job counts.
For their annual Workers’ Memorial Day ceremony today, the New York City Central Labor Council and NYCOSH gathered outside the Waldorf Astoria renovation project. This site was where a worker employed by a non-union electrical contractor lost his life recently. On Wednesday, the NYC Building Trades will hold the annual Memorial Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral honoring construction workers who were killed on the job. Please come and stand in solidarity with all workers who risk their lives everyday.
May Day (International Workers’ Day) is on Thursday. It’s a day that echoes with the voices of working people from every corner of the world. A day of pride, of protest, of remembrance, and of resolve. May Day was born in the streets of Chicago in 1886, when hundreds of thousands of American workers rose up to demand the eight-hour workday. They risked their jobs, their safety, and, in the tragic case of Haymarket Square, even their lives. It was a powerful cry for dignity and fairness — a cry that sparked a global movement. Let this May Day serve as a reminder that the labor movement is not bound by borders, and that our solidarity knows no limits. Let us reclaim this day — not as a relic of the past, but as a call to action, a symbol of unity, and a testament to the power of working people everywhere. We honor that legacy. And we also look forward because the fight for dignity, equity, living wages, the right to organize and to be heard is not history. It is our present. And it is our future.
I urge you all, brothers and sisters, to keep the Union strong. It is our legacy, and the key to our continued success.
