VOLUME 89 No. 6 ® ★
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Thursday, September 4-10, 2025
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What’s Inside
89
YEARS
IBEW Local 1 celebrates 2025 graduating class
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Laborers Local 110 Volunteer Organizing Committee reaches out to St. Louisans in need Page 3
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler: ‘The State of Our Unions is under attack and fighting back’ AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler delivered the 2025 State of the Unions address, highlighting the resilience and strength of workers who are under constant threat from the Trump administration’s assaults on their jobs, contracts and communities. The speech also debuted new polling, conducted by the AFL-CIO and David Binder Research, that found: • Trust for unions is 20 points higher than trust for either the Democratic or Republican party. • Nearly two-thirds of workers trust unions, while every other major institution — including political parties, the Supreme Court, religious institutions — is under water with working people. • Among those “on-the-edge” voters who are most worried about their
“UNIONS ARE THE ONE THING we agree on,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in last week’s State of the Unions address. “Republicans aren’t going to save us. Democrats aren’t going to save us. Working people are going to save ourselves.” – AFL-CIO screencap
ability to make ends meet, raise their families and retire securely, 75 percent see unions as their best shot at a decent life and a retirement with dignity. The AFL-CIO represents 63 unions and nearly 15 million working people. President Shuler shared stories from the AFL-CIO’s 40-plus-city “It’s Better in a Union: Fighting for Freedom, Fairness and Security” bus tour, which stopped in St. Louis on July 25. Her speech included accounts from veterans fired from their federal government jobs and immigrant workers living under the mass deportation agenda, as well as the historic union organizing and contract fights across the country. She described the Trump adminis-
tration as “government of, by, and for the billionaires,” and stressed that “Republicans aren’t going to save us. Democrats aren’t going to save us. Working people are going to save ourselves.” President Shuler’s address also kicked off the Workers’ Labor Day week of action, during which the Labor Movement and allies hosted nearly 1,000 events across the country in the fight for what workers deserve.
STATE OF WORKING PEOPLE UNDER ATTACK Shuler delivered her speech at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., two blocks from the White House. See SHULER page 14
SEIU Local 1 members rally for good, union jobs on heels of contract expirations for 1,600 janitors here AFT Local 420 overwhelmingly votes ‘no-confidence’ in SLPS Superintendent Millicent Borishade Page 4
Labor History
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Retirees sponsor bingo for veterans on 90th anniversary of Social Security Page 12
Clayton, MO – Members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1 last week protested the use of non-union janitors at two office buildings in downtown Clayton. SEIU Local 1 officials said janitors working at Regions Centre at 8182 Maryland Ave. and the Energizer Building at 8235 Forsythe Blvd. are paid $14 per hour, haven’t had a raise for two years and many can’t afford health benefits. The 12 to 14 workers are employed by Spotless Building Services. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the office buildings are owned by entities associ-
ated with the Novelly family that owns St. Louis-based Apex Oil. The buildings’ manager is Crest Management, of which Jared Novelly, President Donald Trump’s appointed ambassador to New Zealand, Samoa, the Cook Islands and Niue, is chairman.
ST. LOUIS LABOR COUNCIL President Pat Kellett (center), rallied with SEIU Local 1 members Aug. 26 at the Regions Centre in Clayton for good, union janitorial jobs on heels of contract expirations impacting 1,600 janitors.
BETTER IN A UNION Local 1 organizer Carl Walter said if the janitors working for Spotless were represented by Local 1, they would earn an average wage of $16 per hour and have considerably better health benefits. The Aug. 26 rally was held as Lo-
– SEIU Local 1 photo
cal 1 negotiates a new contract with the Contract Cleaners Association that covers 1,600 union janitors. The current contract expires Oct. 31. Association members include
4M Building Solutions, The Clean Tech Co., ABM, SBM Management Services and Woodley Building Maintenance. See SEIU JANITORS page 14
Trump halts big offshore wind projects, costing 1,000 jobs Washington (PAI) — President Donald Trump, who likes to boast he’s a job creator, just killed 1,000 jobs, pulling the federal permit for the Revolution Wind project in Long Island Sound and its associated shore facilities. Building trades members constructing the project and its onshore terminal complex, hired by the Norwegian firm Equinor, were thrown out of work. Union leaders are outraged. The stop-work order and the pulled permit marked the second time Trump schemed to stop Revolution Wind, all to feed his hate of
Periodicals Publication
“green energy” and to please his party’s deniers of the fact that greenhouse gases produce global warming. Coal-fired and oil-fired electric power plants are leading producers of greenhouse gases. Solar power, hydro power and wind power are alternative energy sources. Pulling the Revolution Wind permit also benefits Trump’s and the GOP’s corporate campaign contributors from fossil fuel firms. Trump gathered that crowd at Mara-Lago during last year’s campaign and offered a quid pro quo: Donate $1 billion and I’ll free you from rules
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and taxes. Revolution Wind was scheduled for completion in 2027. It would have produced enough energy to fuel 500,000 homes yearly.
FIRED 1,000 WORKERS “Let’s call the stop-work order for Revolution Wind what it is,” said an outraged Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades MCGARVEY Unions. “President Trump just fired 1,000 of our members who already
labored to complete 80 percent of this major project.” “A ‘stop-work order’ is the fancy bureaucratic term, but it means one thing: Throwing skilled American workers off the job after they’ve spent a decade training, building, and delivering” the new source of needed electrical power. “This project isn’t some pipe dream; it’s real steel in the water and $1.3 billion in investment already on the ground. And with the stroke of a pen late on a Friday, President Trump personally signed off on killing these jobs and creatSee WIND PROJECT page 15
Members of the following unions and councils see page 5 for changes in your notices ILLINOIS
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• IAM District 9 • IAM Lodge 688 • St. Louis Labor Council