Philadelphia, PA — August 20, 2025 — North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) hosted its 71^st Convention this week in Philadelphia, gathering leaders from across the U.S. and Canada under the theme “Built to Last, Onward Together.” Held every five years, the convention sets NABTU’s priorities for the next five years, elects leadership, and strengthens the union construction industry’s collective vision.

In his keynote address, NABTU President Sean McGarvey reflected on historic wins, pressing challenges, and the need for unity and action. “What we do isn’t for the moment. It’s not for the election cycle. It’s for generations of building trades workers who deserve dignity, security, and a voice on the job,” McGarvey said. “Our responsibility isn’t to a party; it’s to our people, our members and their families, and our future.”

McGarvey celebrated record investments in training infrastructure, labor standards, energy policy, and industrial strategy. He also warned of policy rollbacks, such as the loss of $480 billion in clean energy tax credits, stalled projects, a slowing construction economy, and the first real unemployment that we’ve seen in the construction industry in 13 years. Highlighting NABTU’s progress, McGarvey pointed to a long list of accomplishments including the historic number of active Registered Apprenticeship enrollments at the beginning of 2025, the launch of TradesFutures and career pathway expansion with over 300 Apprenticeship Readiness Programs across the continent, the exponential boom of the Tradeswomen Build Nations movement, the rollout of the RESPECT initiative to reinforce jobsite culture, and two consecutive years of record net growth in 2023 and 2024 across the Building Trades’ 14 affiliate unions, marking the most significant expansion of membership in the trades since the 1950s.

During the convention, McGarvey and Secretary-Treasurer Brandon Bishop were unanimously re-elected to lead NABTU’s over 3 million members in the U.S. and Canada. Delegates also passed resolutions to expand opportunities, market share, and industry impact.

“Together, we’ve created more job opportunities, uplifted standards for the entire construction industry, and proven time and again that our values of solidarity, equity, and integrity are what truly make our nations strong,” Bishop said in his acceptance speech.  McGarvey closed his speech with a call to action that “we must protect what we’ve built, keep building a strong and viable future for our people, our movement, and our model, and make sure it’s accessible for the next generation.”

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Media Contact: Betsy Barrett| bbarrett@nabtu.org | 202-997-3266

About NABTU: North America’s Building Trades Unions is an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry, collectively representing over 3 million skilled craft professionals in the United States and Canada. Each year, our unions and signatory contractor partners invest over $2 billion in private-sector money to fund and operate nearly 2,000 apprenticeship training and education facilities across North America that produce the safest, most highly trained, and most 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.