Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.

Following the Civil War, the number of New York City's building trades unions rapidly increased, pointing to the need for joint action. In 1884, six building trades unions organized a Board of Delegates. Factional strife created additional building trades organizations, but they reunited in 1902 as the United Board of Building Trades, comprised of 22 skilled and 15 unskilled trades. A lockout of building supply workers forced another split, establishing the Building Trade Council of New York in 1902. Until 1910, the Council's main goal was to resolve jurisidictional disputes, after which time wage demands became more important. In New York, if one craft was granted a wage increase, the differentials in the other trades were disturbed. The Building Trades Council acted as the machinery to stabilize wages.

The post-World War I building boom brought relative industrial peace to the industry. In the mid-1930s, the Building Trades Council reorganized into the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. Today it is comprised of sixteen unions representing a total of one million members. It works to create job opportunies by interfacing with private developers while dealing with city, state and federal agencies, and mediating jursidictional disputes.

The guiding spirit of the Council for most of the post-World War II period was Peter Brennan. The business agent of Painters Local 1456, Brennan was appointed maintenance chairman of the Construction Trades Council in 1951 and was elected president of the council in 1957, a post he held continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1975 while he served as Richard M. Nixon's appointee as U. S. Secretary of Labor (1973-1977). Brennan gained national publicity in 1970 when he organized New York construction workers in support of U.S. armed forces serving in the Vietnam conflict and led them in a violent confrontation with anti-war protesters. Since August, 1992, the Council has been led by Edward J. Malloy, an ex-steamfitter who started as an apprentice in his union's Local 638 in 1960.

One of the Council's major concerns is the enforcement of prevailing wage rates. Recent projects have been the resource recovery plant at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Riverside South development on Manhattan's West Side. At the Yard, the Council successfully pressed city authorities to approve installation of a controversial incinerator that has been opposed for five years. The Council supported Donald Trump in his acquisition of Riverside South; its construction should create almost 100,000 jobs.