Listen: What Does Mamdani’s Seismic Win Mean for Labor?
Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson and IUPAT General President Jimmy Williams, Jr.
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of “What’s Going On?” we hear Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants CWA, and Jimmy Williams Jr., general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades tell a packed midtown labor forum last Friday that it is time for the union movement to build on the momentum from Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s seismic win.
Nelson told the packed audience of over 300 mostly young labor activists that Mamdani's win was repudiation of status quo politics that can be built on nationally.
The gathering, at The People's Forum, was entitled Let Them Tremble-Power, Crisis and Opportunity in the Labor Movement.
“This was about rejecting the idea that we should just be just paying attention to polls—people should be telling us who is electable and who is not. Look at what can happen when you just believe that you can do something different,” Nelson said. “Look at what happens when you just go out into the neighborhoods and ask people, ‘How are you doing? What are your issues? What's going on with you? How can I help?’”
Nelson continued, “Look at what we can build in a year's time if we just decide to do it. People are excited. And you know that power, when it is truly with the people, and to me this election here in New York was about showing the city belongs to the people.”
Nelson linked Mamdani's successful agenda setting meeting with President Trump hours earlier, as a direct result of the Mayor-elect's lopsided electoral victory fueled by a massive turnout. After the meeting, Trump posted on Truth Social that "It was a Great Honor meeting Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor of New York City.”
“When Zohran walked into that office he didn't walk in as a single man, he walked in with the people of New York," Nelson said. “That's the kind of movement that we can build if we simply decide to. That's the kind of movement we can build if young people are able to lead us forward because young people are not encumbered with what came before.”
Jimmy Williams Jr., general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, told the crowd that building trades unions like his need to think beyond a narrow self-interested agenda by pushing for priorities that serve the broader community like affordable housing and effectively addressing the climate crisis.
"I am a construction worker and I want to build whatever the hell they want to build so our members can go to work. But if we are not building affordable housing, we got to be able to not support those projects unless they have affordability in them and they put working class people back on the road as opposed to our members just going to work," Williams told the crowd.
"Donald Trump has single-handedly taken over the Republican Party with an extreme right authoritarian type view of the world controlled by the richest people on the globe and he did so in ten years," Willaims said. "I keep going back to the fact that it is doable to reorganize the Democratic Party, but we have to be very disciplined in doing it and we have to tell them when they are wrong. Donald Trump literally removed 18 qualified people that were running for president in 2016 by calling them out on what they believed on the right was some bullshit."
Joe Maniscalso, Work-Bites editor, shares his reporting on how low wages for the FDNY EMS workforce are driving a retention crisis that's blowing up response times as call volume continues to grow.
New York State Senator John Liu, chair of the New York City Education Committee sounds the alarm on the Trump's administration's doubling down on dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, long a top priority of the right wing.
“In his move to dismantle the US Department of Education and shift its responsibilities to unrelated federal agencies, Donald Trump is miring the entire system in bureaucracy and revealing just how little he prioritizes the education of our nation’s children," Liu said. "Education is, as it should be, a fundamental responsibility of every level of government, especially the federal government. It should not be solely relegated to states, which vary wildly across the nation in philosophy, funding, and focus. New York rejects this administration’s attacks on our children and will continue standing with students, families, teachers, and educators to protect the sanctity of our schools.”
Listen to the entire show below: