2023 Labor Power Players

Mario Cilento began his work at the New York State AFL-CIO in 1992 and was elected president in 2011.  As president, he has concentrated on harnessing the collective power of the State AFL‐CIO’s 3000 public sector, private sector and building trades union affiliates and their 2.5 million members to enact legislation that has a real impact on the lives of working families.

Jim Conigliaro, Jr. has spent his entire career organizing, advocating and representing workers who have been underrepresented and undervalued. Jim began his career as an organizer with the Machinists Union, advancing to leadership roles after graduating from St. John’s University School of Law. In 2016, Jim founded the Independent Drivers Guild representing app-based drivers to win groundbreaking rights and benefits. He now dedicates his labor law practice and consultancy to advocate for working families.

What is one of your organization’s recent successes?
Jim led the Independent Drivers Guild to landmark victories that put billions of dollars in the pockets of rideshare drivers, from requiring a tipping option in the Uber app to petitioning for and winning the nation’s first minimum pay standard for drivers. On the Board of Directors of New York State’s Black Car Workers’ Compensation Fund, Jim successfully advocated to expand benefits for rideshare drivers, making NY the national leader in protecting gig workers.

What are the benefits that union membership (your union if applicable) provides?
For decades for-hire vehicle drivers have been denied union rights in the U.S. As a result, this workforce lacked protections and benefits. In NYC, the Drivers Guild secured the nation’s first livable wage law for Uber and Lyft drivers. We won benefits like free telemedicine, vision, and dental benefits. We created the first program to fight unfair app deactivations, helping thousands of drivers get back to work.

Jeanine Conley Daves is office managing shareholder at Littler. In this role, Ms. Conley Daves advises and counsels clients in all industries and guides them through all areas of employment law from hiring to termination. Previously, Ms. Conley Daves served as clerk to the Hon. William G. Bassler in the District Court of the District of New Jersey. Ms. Conley Daves earned her B.S. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Kathleen Culhane, president of Nontraditional Employment for Women, is an advocate for the women of NYC particularly for tradeswomen in the unionized construction industry with over 20-years of experience developing, implementing, and expanding successful programmatic efforts for low-income individuals. Kathleen leads the organization to meet ambitious programmatic goals and has been instrumental in the creation of many innovative programs, securing NEW as a national model for advancing women, transgender, and non-binary individuals in the construction trades.

dWhat is one of your organization’s recent successes?
Recently Kathleen led the efforts to develop new green programming for the green infrastructure opportunities, creating a nontraditional childcare program to address the barriers women face when their career doesn’t fall within the 9-5 journey, or working with partners on the city state and federal level to ensure women get equal access to hours on a jobsite.

What are the benefits that union membership provides?
When it comes to addressing gender inequality in the labor market, unions make the biggest impact. Unions bring wage setting into the open and help ensure that employers set wages based on objective criteria, such as skill, effort, and responsibility. NYC building and construction trade unions are dedicated to fair schedules, fairwages, access to healthcare, and paid leave for all working families and women. Unionized women make on average 23% more than women without a union.

Joseph D’Amato is the business manager of the Building Concrete, Excavating & Common Laborers’ Local 731, which represents several thousand excavators alongside many other workers in New York City. Mr. D’Amato has been serving as business manager since 2000. Notably, after witnessing the tragedy of 9/11 Mr. D’Amato mobilized members of the union to join the rescue effort. Mr.D’Amato also serves on the executive board of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.

Rebecca Damon is a champion for workers’ rights whose leadership includes strengthening New York’s right of publicity laws and digital image rights for the benefit of all members. She previously served as executive vice president of the union and as president of the New York Local. A leading advocate for workers’ rights, Damon serves on the New York State AFL-CIO Executive Council and the New York City Central Labor Council.

What is one of your organization’s recent successes?
SAG-AFTRA was instrumental in passing critical legislation supporting New York’s film and television tax incentives, successfully advocating to create more union jobs.The union has made the protection of its members in highly intimate scenes a keystone of its sexual harassment prevention efforts through its  initiative to build the profession of intimacy coordinators and its member mobile app for reporting sexual harassment and abuse on the job.

What are the benefits that union membership (your union if applicable) provides?
SAG-AFTRA members are the faces and voices that entertain and inform America and the world. With national offices in Los Angeles and New York, and local offices nationwide, SAG-AFTRA members work together to secure the strongest protections for media artists into the 21st century and beyond. SAG-AFTRA fights for and enforces fair contracts, organizes work, ensures timely payment of residuals, and advocates for legislation that benefits our members and the industry.

Richard Davis started as a bus operator in Manhattan in1985 and worked his way up to vice president of MaBSTOA, then to secretary-treasurer, and finally president of the largest transportation union in America representing 45,000 transit workers, mostly with the MTA. He has worked to raise the profile of women within the union, to enhance safety for the workforce, and to train a new generation to take on the challenges of the 21st Century.

What is one of your organization’s recent successes?
Local 100 won a $500,000 benefit for the families of transit workers who died of COVID-19 before the vaccine became available, secured raises for station agents transitioning to new duties in station platforms, forced the MTA to design safer cockpit style enclosures for bus operators, and successfully fought for increased law enforcement presence in our transit system to deter assaults against workers.

What are the benefits that union membership (your union if applicable) provides?
Union membership means job security, enhanced health benefits, and strict contract enforcement in the workplace to ensure safety on the job. The union has advocated successfully for enhanced pension benefits, and recognition for transit workers who served in the rescue and recovery operation at Ground Zero 9/11. We also provide free childcare and career enhancing educational courses to our members.

After serving as an assembly member for five years, Carmen De La Rosa was elected as the first Dominican woman to serve for the 10th Council District representing Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill. At the City Council, she serves as the chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee and proudly adds to a majority woman and women-led Council, making up the most diverse class in the city’s history.

What is one of your organization’s recent successes?
In her first year, she rallied with a range of workers from NYSNA nurses to Chipotle workers, led the conversation regarding Local Law 97, and recently partnered with several unions and Carbon Free & Healthy Schools to bring tens of thousands of union jobs into the green economy. She was #20 in City & State’s Labor Power 100 and has continued fighting for better working conditions and educational programs for our city’s workforce.

What are the benefits that union membership (your union if applicable) provides?
Union membership provides an amplified voice of protection and bargaining power, ensures industries – especially dangerous ones such as construction – have trained labor with higher safety standards, and gives workers a platform to change how we see labor. Unions protect and uplift working families, providing benefits and access to resources where employers fail to deliver.

Susan DeCarava, now in her second term as president of The NewsGuild of New York, leads the fastest growing media union in the nation. The first Black woman to hold office, Susan has been transformative to the Guild, organizing to double its membership, fighting for pay equity, negotiating contracts banning NDAs in sexual harassment settlements and that guarantee reproductive health benefits. Susan is respected in newsrooms across the city as a fierce advocate for workers.

What is one of your organization’s recent successes?
In November, over 200 Gannett journalists in NY/NJ walked out to protest so-called austerity measures. In December, Reuters’ journalists secured a three-year deal that guarantees 10.5% wage increases and over 1,000 New York Times’ workers went on a one-day strike. At NBC we forced the company to restore stolen wages and recently walked off the job to protest illegal layoffs. Our members are fighting for the value of their work!

What are the benefits that union membership (your union if applicable) provides?
Workers deserve to have a direct say in the terms and conditions of their employment, to make livable wages, and to experience sustained job security. It is especially critical for journalists to have a voice in their newsrooms without fear of reprisal. Forming a union allows you to fight directly for the rights that all workers are entitled to collectively, with your coworkers, and to foster a community that redefines your experience at work and beyond.

Bhairavi Desai is executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance which represents 15,000 taxi drivers throughout New York City. Ms. Desai has remained at the forefront of the organizations since its founding, leading protests and strikes advocating for the rights of drivers.   In 2011, Ms. Desai formed the National Taxi Workers Alliance which joined the AFL-CIO. Ms. Desai earned her degree in women’s studies from Rutgers University.