Labor is strong in this country and it’s strongest in New York.
New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento took the podium Friday afternoon to recognize NYSUT unionists for building a movement that continues to drive the conversation across the country.
During Cilento’s address, he noted that 1 in 4 workers in New York are union members, which is two times the national average, and 1 in 7 union members come from New York.
He called attention to NYSUT’s heap of recent legislative victories, ranging from APPR reform to the extreme classroom heat bill, and added that scoring this many wins in just two years is unique.
“Let me be clear,” Cilento said. “That’s a good decade’s worth of work.”
Such success begets success, and as a result of these triumphs, NYSUT is poised to increase its influence, Cilento continued. That strength is vital to the statewide union’s mission, but it also fuels organized labor as a whole, and with recent federal shakeups threatening to upend the country’s public schools, that power is more critical now than ever, Cilento said.
“We have to put everything else aside in this moment that we are living in right now, and we have to fight back. We have to fight to protect our standard of living and quality of life in this country. We have to fight back to protect our public education system, our public schools and we have to fight back to protect the future for our children,” Cilento said.
“We will be successful because we all share a bond in this movement, every single one of us,” he said.