WILMINGTON — James Maravelias says a lot has changed during his union involvement of more than 30 years – but he’s ready for a new, slower change of pace.
The president of Delaware’s chapter of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (Delaware State AFL-CIO) will retire as of Jan. 1, starting the new year with a new resolution. He wants to spend more time with his family.
“There’s still another hat that I’m wearing for the Delaware Building Construction Trades Council as its president,” he told the Delaware Business Times. “But I have a grandkid now and I’d like to spend more time with him and take the burden of child care off of the parents, my wife and I enjoy that. And to just not have to worry about getting up at 6 a.m. because I’ve got to get to the office or meet this guy or that guy. [I’m looking forward to] the freedom.”
While Maravelias, who led the Laborers’ Local 199, prepared for his next step toward full retirement, he reflected on his many years of union work, recognizing the differences between “then and now” and where labor rights are headed in Delaware.
“We’re as strong as our weakest link. That’s basically how the unions are. We’ve been lucky in Delaware, at least for the group that sits around my table, everybody’s been supportive and on the same page,” he told DBT. “We operate differently now. Back then, we were coming out of the depression in the 40s and 50s and they were dealing with a lot of anti-union sentiment. Now people are starting to understand where we’re coming from because we’re basically taking care of their neighbor.”
During his 10-year tenure of leading the Delaware State AFL-CIO, as well as the years leading up to that role, Maravelias says he tried to work for several issues affecting union members and non-union workers alike, such as paid family and medical leave and prevailing wage issues. But some areas still have room for improvement such as neutrality and discrimination.
“These things don’t help just us, it helps every worker in Delaware,” he said. “We’d like to have neutrality for the workers and unions so we can speak to the worker without them fearing that they’re going to lose their job – protection. And inequality, that’s a big one, discrimination on the work site, as well as poverty because we still have members on the poverty level, including some state workers. It’s not right.”
In the meantime, from his current seat as the president of both the Delaware AFL-CIO and the Delaware Building Construction Trades Council, he said the Delaware-way will continue to benefit his successor Nelson Hill (UFCW Local 27), the organization’s current vice president.
“This is Delaware – we work together. We see each other at the supermarket, for crying out loud. . . You bump into people everywhere you turn around. It doesn’t help anybody being an adversary. You can have a working relationship knowing we want to build, we want to demo and we want to build again. That’s what we want to do,” he told DBT.
“I have been extremely lucky in my career with the union. You don’t know it when you’re active in the field, you don’t see it, you’re not thinking about it until today when you retire. Then you look at Social Security and see how much you get and then your union benefit is there, too. Don’t expect the government to take care of you. But through the union, we can say we made that happen,” Maravelias added.
