Spring 2025

My Fellow Brothers and Sisters,

Day “ONE” and many promises have already been broken! We are sure off to a bumpy start with our new President. We can’t act surprised when he told us exactly what he was going to do, and now he’s playing it out at even more extreme levels. President Trump has already dismantled the NLRB (National Labor Relation Board) with only leaving two sitting members and without a quorum to hear cases. The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency vested with the power to safeguard employees' rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The shake-up is particularly alarming because—by leaving only two members on the five-member board—the Trump administration has eliminated a quorum, effectively preventing the NLRB from ruling on cases at the federal level.

What else does that mean? States such as Utah are already passing legislation to ban collective bargaining. Labor unions that serve teachers, firefighters, police and other public employees in Utah will no longer be able to negotiate on behalf of their workers under a bill that received final legislative approval. In that state, the Republican policy banning collective bargaining for all public sector professions passed the Senate in a 16-13 vote. This is now sitting on the Governor’s desk ready for his signature of approval.

Again, this doesn’t affect us laborers here in Illinois but yet it does tell us that fellow brothers and sisters in other unions are under attack across the country. Illinois is an island surrounded by red anti-union states. When CBAs are being eliminated, so does the system that feeds our welfare and pension. This in return, affects all our families, working and retired. If those negotiated fringe benefits aren’t fought and agreed on then we lose them, your children lose them and future generations.

Our voice and VOTE matters! This leads me right into upcoming local elections here throughout the state of Illinois on April 1, 2025. Make sure to get out and vote for your local candidates who support ours and your best interests.

We’ll have to cross our fingers and hope that Trump’s next round of vengeful cuts won’t start in on Davis Bacon laws throughout the country. This would undermine our union rates here in Chicagoland and affect us and our Union jobs. This is shaping up to be an extremely long four years for us unions and our members!

In closing, every year at this time I remind our members who are seeking employment that summer is right around the corner. This brings upcoming asbestos work throughout Chicago and surrounding counties at our older schools. Those who are interested now would be the time to get training. This is a one week class that is offered at our Training Center and once the class is complete it could take up to a month to receive your license from the state. So make sure to get licensed before summer starts heating up.

Fraternally yours,

Frank Taffora

President/Business Manager