Building Trades Honor the Dead

Heads Bow in Mourning

By Bill Hohlfeld

Friday, May 02, 2008

On Monday, April 28, Workers Memorial Day, thousands of New York City Building Construction Tradesmen turned out in the rain to pay homage to the 26 construction workers who have died in the past twelve months. Never was the need for a strong trade union movement more obvious than when St. Patrick's chimed each time the name of one of the departed was read.

While workers themselves have always known this to be the case,Tuesday's service showed clearly that contractors such as Bovis, representatives of regulatory agencies such as OSHA, and even the Church herself are clearly in favor of Union Building Construction. In what can only be described as poetry, the priest took the pulpit and spoke of the Union Construction Worker's hand as an extension of "God's hand of creation."