TABLE OF CONTENTS    • In Memory  • Union Heroes (NYC) Fire Fighters  • The Pentagon  • Roll Call of Heroes

Many of the 2,500 emergency medical technicians and paramedics who are members of AFSCME Local 2507/District Council 37 rushed to the scene, dispensing emergency treatment and transporting victims to hospitals. Sixty-five EMTs and paramedics were injured; two remain missing. Several members of Emergency Medical Service Lieutenants & Captains, AFSCME Local 3621, also were injured. Hundreds of other DC 37 members aided with the rescue effort, including public health sanitarians from the Department of Health.

• Health care workers who are members of SEIU 1199NY (above) aided disaster victims suffering from burns, trauma and smoke and dust inhalation at St. Vincent’s and New York University Downtown hospitals, just blocks from the World Trade Center.
  
  
• The New York State Police Investigators Association, IUPA, Local 4, assigned approximately 100 investigators to the World Trade Center recovery effort, including identifying the deceased, participating in a joint terrorist task force and responding to individuals who believe family members are trapped within the wreckage.
  
  
• Machinists from Local 1269 in Genoa, Ill., who work for AG Communications prepared a mobile telephone switching unit that could handle 4,000 lines and drove it to New York City—a crucial backup for a shaken telecommunications system. Members of Electrical Workers Local 21 cooperated in the effort.
  
  
• Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers locals 3 and 50 were contacted by New York emergency shelters and asked to obtain paper masks and gloves used by BCTGM workers in bakeries. After telephoning union bakeries, the locals helped distribute 20,000 masks to Manhattan rescue workers.
  
  

• Gift of life: AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson was among more than 220 AFL-CIO staff and area unionists who donated blood at the federation's headquarters for victims of Sept. 11.

  The New York State AFL-CIO and United Food and Commercial Workers locals 342-50 and 1500 arranged and loaded two shipments of donated food, water and other beverages for delivery to firefighters on the scene.
  
  
• Postal Workers from several post offices around Richmond, Mich., packed, marked and loaded up supplies—ranging from face masks to dog food—onto trucks headed for the relief effort in New York City.
  
  
• Hundreds of union members and staff knocked on doors throughout Washington, D.C., in an event sponsored by the Metropolitan Washington Council to let union families know how they could aid victims and their families. Noting that five members of his union were killed while working on top of the World Trade Center, Painters and Allied Trades District 51 organizer Don Rusche says he volunteered to go door to door because “the union spirit is to do good and help, not just in disasters but all the time.”
  
  
• Steelworkers Local 12003 activist John Meade in Boston mobilized nine of his co-workers at Boston Gas and drove to New York City to be part of the “bucket brigade” clearing debris from the World Trade Center. “My wife is a nurse,” says Local 12003 member John Crehan. “She told me that I was going to be a changed man if I went there—and she’s right.”
  
  
• Days after the Sept. 11 attack, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers members already were at work redesigning cockpit doors.
  
  
• SEIU Local 32BJ, which represents janitors and other service workers in New York City, negotiated a comprehensive aid package for 1,800 members left jobless by the terrorist attack. The agreement between the union and the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, the multi-employer association that negotiates building service contracts, gives displaced workers supplemental unemployment and health benefits for up to six months and plans to give preference to displaced janitors in future hiring.
  
  

• Relief efforts: New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes (left) and New York CLC President Brian Mclaughlin, who accompanied AFL-CIO President John Sweeney (center) to the site of the World Trade Center, are leading relief efforts across the city.

  In a show of solidarity with New Yorkers, AFSCME leaders moved their upcoming women’s conference to Manhattan. The mid-November conference originally was slated to take place in Boston.
  
  
• Eighteen Carpenters were killed in the World Trade Center attack, including one apprentice who was on his second day on the job. In the days following the attack, hundreds of Carpenters from New York and the surrounding areas joined in the rescue and recovery efforts.
  
  
• “We may bury bodies, but not our spirits,” Darryll Russell, business manager of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 23 wrote in a letter accompanying his local’s donation to the UA Emergency World Trade Center/Pentagon Assistance Program. The UA fund has raised more than $500,000 from members and local unions since the attacks. Four members of Steamfitters Local 638 were killed and two injured Sept. 11.
  
  
• About 500 members of Asbestos Workers/Laborers Local 78 have used their training and special skills in asbestos handling in the cleanup efforts at Ground Zero. Asbestos—a dangerous and cancer-causing insulation material—was used throughout the World Trade Center and damaged buildings nearby.
  
  
• Stagehands, members of Theatrical Stage Employees, coordinated with production houses to provide rescuers with generators, staffing spotlights and other heavy equipment at no charge. Members of Actors’ Equity, Musical Artists, Musicians Union, Screen Actors, Television and Radio Artists and Writers Guild of America, East, donated their time and talents for multimillion-dollar fundraisers to benefit victims’ families. Communications Workers of America members staffed call-in centers for viewers making donations during televised fundraising performances.