To The Members of Local 768,

This coming Wednesday July 7, 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City of New York will hold a Ticker Tape Parade to honor the essential workers of this great City. The Leadership of Local 768 has decided to decline participation in this parade. 

Local 768 represents many of the frontline, front-facing essential workers in this City who had to report to in-person work throughout this devastating  pandemic. To participate in a parade is an injustice to how we have been treated and continue to be treated. The Early Retirement Incentive was not passed, and Essential Worker pay seems to have disappeared. Many of our members during the Return to Work were greeted with dirt and grime in their office due to the closure of those spaces for over a year. The spaces were not a healthy place to return to and work in. 

Let us not forget the foot-dragging and political bickering in the early days, keeping members working unsafely in offices at their worksites, while the rest of the City was being shut down around them. Let us not forget the struggle the members of this local faced in obtaining adequate PPE while working on the frontline, and in the performance of the essential work needed to care for the sick, and keep the City functioning. Let us not forget how the City decided PPE at one point was not necessary for Health Inspectors, Public Health Advisors & Assistants, and Contact Tracers, or any of the other titles needing PPE who were forgotten in the pandemic.

A Ticker Tape Parade usually costs the City over a million dollars, and while the money is supposedly being raised through private funding, Local 768 wants to see Essential Worker Pay back on the table for All Municipal Workers of New York City.

Local 768 Leadership firmly believes it is important to send a strong message to the Mayor of New York: YOU CANNOT BUY US OFF WITH A PARADE!

In Solidarity,

Local 768 Leadership