By: Paul Capurso, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, NYC District Council of Carpenters

Most Americans do not spend much time thinking about where their rights on the job came from.

The eight-hour workday. The weekend. Workplace safety standards. Protections against child labor. The right to organize and bargain collectively.
These things can feel permanent now, like they were always part of working life in this country.

They were not. It was workers who fought for them.

As industrialization transformed New York City, workers faced long hours in factories and manufacturing plants. They were paid low wages. They were exposed to dangerous conditions and were too often injured or killed on the job with little or no recourse. Workers who complained could be fired and replaced as if they didn’t matter.

People at the time shrugged their shoulders and said, “that’s just the way things are.” Eventually, workers decided they had had enough.

They understood a fundamental truth that some businesses did not want to acknowledge. Workers were their lifeblood. Without their hands, their skills, and their hard work, nothing got built, nothing moved, and nothing got done.

They learned that their individual power was limited, but when they organized and stood together, they could demand fairer pay, safer conditions, greater dignity, and better treatment.

One worker could be ignored. Thousands could not.

Once workers recognized their collective strength, there was nothing that could stop them. They risked their jobs and their livelihoods to demand better conditions.

Here in New York City, generations of union men and women helped turn those fights into standards that changed working life for millions of people.

They organized. They formed unions. They walked off their jobs. They negotiated together.

They established wage standards, safety standards, and a basic principle that workers deserve a voice in their working conditions.

That principle changed New York. And New York’s labor movement helped change how workers were treated across the United States.

In construction, it meant carpenters no longer had to bargain one at a time . Through their unions, they could bargain collectively, and carpenters stood together to establish standards for the value of their skilled labor.

That collective strength helped secure health benefits and retirement security. It created apprenticeship programs so the next generation could learn the trade properly. It raised expectations for safety on jobsites. And it helped build a middle class in a city where working people have always had to fight to stay ahead.

The New York City District Council of Carpenters continues to honor the hard-fought gains of the workers before us. Our work comes with a profound responsibility.

We cannot celebrate what previous generations won and assume the work is done.

We have to protect it, strengthen it, and expand it for the next generation.

That is especially important because the labor movement today is operating from a weaker position than it did for much of the last century.

Union density in the United States has fallen dramatically over the past several decades. In 1983, 20.1% of wage and salary workers belonged to a union. By 2025, that figure had fallen to 10%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That decline has consequences.

When union density falls, workers lose bargaining power. Wages come under pressure. Benefits become easier to cut. Standards become harder to enforce. Workers are told once again that they should simply be grateful to have a job.

In construction, we see another consequence clearly: nonunion contractors can undercut responsible union contractors by lowering labor standards.

A contractor that wins work by paying less, providing fewer benefits, and cutting back on training is not creating a better construction industry. It is lowering the floor.

We all saw what happened to the former Pfizer building. The failures on that project were a stark reminder of why training, oversight, and strong construction standards must be taken seriously.

Unsafe jobsites and exploited workers are not what our predecessors fought for.

That cannot be the future of construction in New York City, and we should never accept it as the cost of doing business.

We need more union work. That means growing our market share, not just maintaining the work that we already have.

We cannot accomplish this by standing still. We have to keep organizing. We have to keep training. We have to keep growing our membership. We have to elect leaders who believe in the value of workers’ rights.

That effort has to reach every borough, especially beyond Manhattan. Development is happening in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Infrastructure is being rebuilt. Neighborhoods are changing. New industries are investing here. Union carpenters must be central to that growth.

We must open the door for the next generation of tradespeople to join our ranks. Every apprentice who walks into our Training Center represents the future of this trade. We have a responsibility to train them and give them the skills they need to keep the trades moving forward.

The labor movement has never advanced because people waited for someone else to give them power. Workers built that power themselves. They did it together. That is how New York became a union town. And if we want it to remain one, we must continue fighting every single day for workers.

We can’t treat Labor Day like it's just another day off from work. We have to remind ourselves of the legacy of the workers who came before us and honor it by continuing the work they started.

Moving forward means organizing harder instead of waiting for things to get better. It means reminding private industry and public officials that union labor is here to stay.

Generations of union leaders taught us that. Now it's our job to teach it to the next generation.