Gary LaBarbera is President of the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, comprising 15 local building trades councils, 12 district councils and state associations, and 135 local unions representing 200,000 tradespeople across the entire state.
Gary has embarked on ambitious negotiations for project labor agreements to provide labor cost savings to advance major public and private projects at risk of stalling due to the economic recession. His work has resulted in excess of $100 billion in public sector project labor agreements with the City of New York and the New York City School Construction Authority, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Gary talks about the value of a union card, how men and women across the five boroughs have a path to middle-class careers in the building trades, and a few of the Building Trades’ leading priorities as an organization including diversity. Gary also discusses what it is like to represent the Teamsters since the 1980s.
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Produced by Jill Carvajal and Josh Schneps