Labor Day Parade Shows Union Solidarity & Fractious Politics

Many thousands of union members from over 200 different groups across many dozens of trades came to midtown Manhattan on Saturday, Sept. 6 to assert their belief in the power of collective bargaining, and solidarity—of a sort.

The union members were joined by handfuls of notable politicians, and if the marchers and floats, trucks and classic cars that made their respective ways up Fifth Avenue from 44th to 64th streets far outnumbered the spectators well, that’s part of the story also.

Despite the relatively sparse turnout, which, for a variety of reasons, is typical for the NYC Central Labor Council—organized event, passions were high but also disciplined.

Unlike at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, which took place on Eastern Parkway on the actual Labor Day holiday, Monday, Sept. 1, and ended with six people shot and one person slashed, there were no reports of violence, or even bad vibes on Fifth Avenue, save perhaps the enmity that some marchers, such as the Writers Guild of America East, expressed toward the President outside Trump Tower at East 56th Street.

On the other hand, however, it’s wise not to mistake a peace march for a harmonious one. While there is still some truth to the 1913 song by Joe Hill, the famed Industrial Workers of the World (Wobbly) activist, “There Is Power in a Union,” union numbers have been fading for decades.

The percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions was 9.9 percent of the workforce in 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union members.

Unions With Different Agendas

This year’s co-grand marshals were: Mark Maroko, president of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council (HTC), and Terri Carmichael Jackson, executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBA).

HTC is backing the various New York City casino proposals, which could be a major boost to the old-line blue-collar construction unions, but many Manhattan residents are fighting.

Likewise, the women’s basketball union is lobbying for better pay via the hashtag #PayThePlayers. But pay-parity efforts are undermined when one calibrates that the men’s NBA still subsidizes the distaff league, even in the Caitlin Clark era.

There’s also union politics, both the internecine and external kind, the latter of which forces one to ask exactly what do certain unions stand for as they made the Janus-faced flip-flop from Andrew Cuomo to Zohran Mamdani after the latter soundly defeated the former in the June 24 Democratic primary.

Among the major players who swapped out the fallen ex-governor for the rising Assembly member and Democratic Socialist were HTC; the building workers union 32BJ, and the healthcare workers union, 1199 SEIU.

As for the United Federation of Teachers, after first declining to make an endorsement in the mayoral primary, after Mamdani’s primary win they swung support to the Assembly member, a decision that alienated many Jewish or pro-Israel teachers while emboldening a contingent of Labor Day Parade participants to march with the flag of Palestine.

Among the politicians present, only Mamdani and his parade buddy for the day and fellow Democrat Socialist icon, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, are closely identified with Palestine.

Solons on Parade

Other solons on the scene, included Governor Kathy Hochul, who has so far stayed out of making any endorsements in the mayor’s race; a smiling but subdued Mayor Eric Adams, lonely in the crowd in a white short-sleeved Mayor Adams shirt and no ball cap; Andrew Cuomo in white short-sleeved shirt; State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a suit; Senator Charles Schumer in a collared short-sleeve shirt; and Curtis Sliwa in his “The People’s Mayor” windbreaker and red beret. All are notably pro-Israel.

Not that most of this should matter at a Labor Day Parade, but that’s on the UFT and the highly activist PSC-CUNY union, representing staff and faculty who have many grievances, including what they decry as the Trump administration’s “McCarthyite” war on higher education.

Also represented in the parade: the Teamsters; Iron Workers; Steamfitters, Roofers, and Sheet Metal Workers; the New York State Nurses Association; the New York Metro Area Postal Union; all manner of transit workers; American Federation of Musicians, which had a live band on their float, of course; the Uniformed Firefighters Association; the Communications Workers of America, including the News Guild, and many more. All did their part to assert, as the signs read, that “New York Is a Union Town.”

One highlight: the Boilermakers Local 5, accompanied by a co-ed bagpipes and drums corps, which recalled the similarly impressive co-ed pipers at the Scottish Day Parade this past April.