Press Release

Sullivan to become Executive Vice President of Bricklayer’s Union as Scarano Announces Retirement

[Washington, D.C.] March 18, 2020 – Gerard Scarano has announced his plans to retire from the International Union Executive Board effective March 31, 2020, ending fifteen years of service as an International Union Officer, and decades of leadership within BAC at the Local and Regional level. 

Like his father Michael before him, Scarano had recently been recognized as a BAC Gold Card member, having joined BAC Local 35 New Jersey as an apprentice over 50 years ago in August 1969. Scarano’s service and dedication to BAC is part of a family tradition that includes not only his father, but also four brothers, two sisters, and his son Jerry.

Scarano served numerous roles within his Local Union and New Jersey State Conference, including as: Secretary-Treasurer of the consolidated Local 5 in southern New Jersey; a member of the National Heavy & Highway Alliance Regional Committee and the New Jersey Transit Authority Committee; Co-Chair of the New Jersey State Labor Management Committee; and Vice President of the New Jersey State Building Trades Council.

In February 2001, Scarano joined the IU’s staff as Regional Director and was appointed Executive Vice President in 2005, a position to which he was re-elected for three additional terms. He is a graduate of the Harvard Trade Union Program. Scarano’s work on the International Union Executive Board included the critical areas of political action and safety and health. Scarano helped lead BAC’s successful efforts to persuade OSHA, in the final year of the Obama Administration, to update its out-of-date and inadequate silica standard with significantly lower permissible exposure limits and clear and comprehensive rules. 

BAC President Driscoll said of Scarano’s retirement, “Jerry’s many contributions to our Union include his tireless leadership in pressing OSHA to adopt, and to enforce, a new silica standard that will prevent many hundreds of deaths and many thousands of illnesses each year among construction workers, including our BAC members.  This literally life-saving work is a proud legacy indeed.”

President Driscoll is pleased to announce that he will appoint Jeremiah Sullivan, Jr., to fulfill the remainder of Scarano’s term as Executive Vice President. 

Sullivan, a second-generation BAC member and leader, joined the Bricklayers Union in 1981 as an Apprentice Bricklayer. Ten years later, after working as a bricklayer, shop steward, layout man and foreman, Sullivan was elected President of BAC Local 9 New York. Following the merger of 8 New York locals, Sullivan served the NY Bricklayers Fringe Benefit Funds as Field Investigator from 1994 until being appointed Secretary-Treasurer of Local 1 New York in March 1997, a position to which he was re-elected by the membership for 4 terms. During his tenure as Secretary-Treasurer, and then President beginning in 2010, Local 1’s membership grew by 1500 members, and its assets more than seven-fold. Over this period, including the worst construction downturn in living memory, Sullivan instituted creative new programs to help signatory contractors remain competitive, keep BAC members working, and sustain the members’ hard-won wages and standards.

In addition, Sullivan has for many years been an active and innovative Administrator of several healthy and robust pension, annuity, and health and welfare funds and is Chairman of the New York City Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee. Sullivan is also an Executive Board member of the New York City and New York State Building and Construction Trades Councils. On the International Union level, he has served on the IU Executive Council as Regional Vice President; the LOEPF Advisory Board; the Audit Committee; and as a Trustee on the Board of the International Masonry Institute. 

Sullivan’s experience, when added to that of his father, the late Jeremiah Sullivan, Sr., who was a union member for over 60 years as well as a long-time local union officer, comes to over a century of service to BAC. 

President Driscoll said of Sullivan, “Jerry is a creative and courageous leader. He brings a tremendous breadth and depth of experience, and a track record of successfully navigating change. I am confident he is the right leader to help our Executive Board steer BAC through the coming years as we build strength upon strength.”

 

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The International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest continuous union in North America and represents roughly 75,000 skilled masonry-trowel trades craftworkers in the United States and Canada, including bricklayers, tile setters, cement masons, plasterers, stone masons, marble masons, restoration workers, PCC and finishers, and terrazzo and mosaic workers.