TWBN Conference Breaks Attendance Record - Again

TWBN Conference Breaks Attendance Record – Again

WASHINGTON, DC – Monday, December 4th, 2023 – North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) held its 13th international Tradeswomen Build Nations conference – the largest gathering of its kind in the world. More than 3900 tradeswomen representing the U.S. and Canada gathered in Washington as a show of solidarity with their fellow tradeswomen, to learn about new programs and opportunities in the industry, and to engage with leaders from the government, industry and NABTU’s fifteen international building trades unions.

The three-day conference, held over the weekend, featured two plenary sessions, a banner parade in the heart of the nation’s capital, and a dozen workshops featuring topics that are critical to tradeswomen in the workforce, including leadership, recruitment, retention, conflict resolution, childcare, occupational safety, and more. The Saturday and Sunday plenary livestream videos and photos captured many of the incredible moments that took place over the weekend.

“Tradeswomen Build Nations has grown exponentially, and we know it will continue to grow,” said NABTU President Sean McGarvey. “NABTU is proud to host the largest annual gathering of Building Trades members and tradeswomen. The caliber of this event is shown through the quality of our speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors, and we thank them for their support of the highly skilled, hardworking women of the Building Trades. NABTU is committed to continuing to support them and increase opportunities for our sisters in the unionized skilled trades.”

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita of the U.S. House of Representatives; Julie Su, Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor; Maria Ford, President of Commercial, Industrial, and Farm & Hardware for the Tools & Outdoor Business, Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.; Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO and NABTU President Sean McGarvey kicked off the conference on Saturday morning with powerful messages for women in the trades.

The Sunday plenary included keynote speeches from Jim Williams, Jr., General President of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, Kilah Engelke, Business Agent of OPCMIA Local 599, and Nicole Schwartz, Executive Director of TradesFutures. Vicki O’Leary, NABTU Tradeswomen’s Committee Chair and Ironworkers International Director of Diversity; Erica Stewart, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers National Coordinator of Women in the Trades Initiatives; and Melissa Wells, Special Assistant to the President of NABTU emceed the event along with their NABTU Tradeswomen Committee members representing all of the NABTU affiliates.

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About NABTU: North America’s Building Trades Unions is an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry that collectively represent over 3 million skilled craft professionals in the United States and Canada. Each year, our unions and signatory contractor partners invest almost $2 billion in private-sector money to fund and operate over 1,900 apprenticeship training and education facilities across North America that produce the safest, most highly trained, and productive skilled craft workers found anywhere in the world. NABTU is dedicated to creating economic security and employment opportunities for its construction workers by safeguarding wage and benefits standards, promoting responsible private capital investments, investing in renowned apprenticeship and training, and creating more construction career pathways to the middle class for women, communities of color, indigenous people, veterans, and the justice-involved. For more information, please visit nabtu.org.

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The more you know… "A day in the Life of Katie, a 42 year old MAGA Republican who believes Trump won in 2020 in spite of all evidence refuting it. Katie gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised. Fortunately, her husband’s insulin medicine has finally been capped at $35./month thanks to the work of the current Democratic President & activists pressuring big Pharma to keep the prices down. All but $10 of her own medications are paid for by her employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Katie gets it too. She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Katie’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the shower, Katie reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained. Katie dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is fairly clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor. Katie begins her work day. She is hard working & has a good job with good pay, even though the CEO is paid over 1000 times per hour what she is paid! Once in a while she wonders if that’s morally right, but quickly squashes such radical thoughts. She does receive medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays, maternity leave, and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Katie's employer pays these standards because Katie's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Katie is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid libtard didn't think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune. It's noon and Katie needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Katie's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Katie's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. Katie has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Katie and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime. During the pandemic Katie received a special tax credit for her children because some old liberal church going President in 2021 thought it was the Christian thing to do to be able to reduce by over 40% the number of American children below the poverty line, all during a tough time for working class Americans. Unfortunately for Katie the GOP voted against extending the credit. Because of an unexpected pregnancy which she fortunately discovered early in her second week when the embryo was still only about 1/100th of an inch in length, and because she resides in a blue state, she has the freedom to make her own personal reproductive decisions based on her family situation. This is because radical feminazis had the gall to suggest many decades before, that basic reproductive rights are part of a woman’s basic rights and privacy. Unfortunately, upon learning of her pregnancy, her husband Jayson deserts his family, moving to a hidden location out of state, to be with another woman. Katie does not live in one of those states that has dictated that even at two weeks after conception & even though she cannot afford another child, and that she faces some health risks due to her age and two previous miscarriages, which she claims were totally under God’s control, she still has the freedom to decide what is best for herself, not Big Brother Government unilaterally forcing its decision on her. Katie is now home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. She is happy to see her father, a Veteran who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Katie wouldn't have to. Katie gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps demonizing every liberal claiming they are all evil, lazy communists, and conservatives are good loyal Americans. He doesn't mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Katie enjoys throughout her day. Nor does he mention that currently the U.S.has the best economy of any industrial nation in the world in spite of world-wide inflation. Yet Katie agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our American lives! Ironically Katie’s own GOP representative in Congress claims credit for the new infrastructure plan that those commie Democrats passed, which has brought thousands of new jobs and several factories to Katie’s rural community, even though Katie’s representative voted AGAINST that infrastructure bill. Katie thinks and reassures herself, “After all, I'm self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have!(Shared from Kay Dee with updates by Paul Harris)

The naming of the "Inflation Reduction Act" and "Bidenomics" will go down in history as two of the biggest marketing and branding blunders of the 21st Century.

Four more years to completely ruin America. Union dolts.

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