THE WORKERIST MANIFESTO

  NONUNION TOWN – the fall of the New York City construction unions, 1969-2026 The City of New York has over 1 million occupied buildings, worth a total of $1.57 trillion dollars, the most valuable pool of real property on the face of the Earth. All of that value is created by New York City’s 400,000 construction workers (the largest construction workforce in America and 4% of this country’s 10 million construction workers). Those buildings are maintained by the city’s 200,000 janitors and stationary engineers, 100,000 security officers and 50,000 hotel workers. Those 750,000 workers maintain these one and a half trillion dollars worth of capital in usable condition, and help keep the city’s 8,000 big landlords wealthy. They don’t get a whole lot in return – 300,000 of those construction workers, 75%, are non union and are paid an average of $20 an hour.   Around a third of those non union workers are paid off the books, with many of those workers being undocumented ...