"It was about changing our lives," Mark Erlich, a labor organizer and union carpenter, said.
Wages and benefits for union carpenters often total $65 an hour; those not paid the union rate can earn less than half that amount.
While she earns about $15,000, Jason, the father of her third child, is a union carpenter who earns $15 an hour, or about $30,000 a year.
He worked as a union carpenter specializing in residential remodeling.
A union carpenter, paid $17.50 an hour plus benefits, he made up to $50,000 a year.
Her father was a union carpenter in the Bronx.
About 800 hourly people, like union carpenters and electricians, will be transferred to Tishman.
(In addition to his men, about 100 union carpenters from Local 11 also worked without charge.)
He previously worked in a steel mill and is now a union carpenter.
There was a union carpenter who had been forced to go without health insurance rather than take a cut in salary.