Bill McCamley, Director of the New Mexico Building Trades Wellness Coalition, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast as part of the Labor 132 series for a wide-ranging conversation that connected labor history from the 1794 Cordwainers to the present-day mental health and overdose crisis in construction.
McCamley opened with a story about leading a three-hour filibuster against a New Mexico legislative attempt to eliminate state prevailing wage protections in 2015. His time speaking included reading aloud the full lyrics of the Dropkick Murphys’ “Workers' Song” to the gallery. He also discussed wage theft, calling it a massive but underexamined problem. He cited a 2017 study that found 2.4 million workers lost more than $8 billion annually due to minimum-wage violations alone. He then linked the Gilded Age concentration of wealth to the current power of billionaire tech executives.
McCamley also addressed the construction trades' mental health and overdose crisis, the 40 million men currently out of the American workforce and what it will take to bring young men into the trades and keep them there.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988, free and anonymous, 24 hours a day.
- McCamley once led a three-hour filibuster of a New Mexico House bill, reading the full Dropkick Murphys Workers' Song to a packed gallery of trades members. The bill passed the House but was killed in the Senate, and New Mexico's prevailing wage protections remain in place. McCamley said the episode reflects a principle he has carried through his entire public life: a fair day's work deserves a fair day's wage, and that is worth fighting for at every level of government.
- A 2017 study cited by McCamley found that minimum wage violations alone cost 2.4 million workers more than $8 billion annually, roughly $3,300 per worker per year, affecting approximately 17 percent of low-wage workers. McCamley connected the problem of wage theft and worker misclassification to the broader concentration of wealth at the top of the American economy. He referenced historical figures, including Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan and connected them to contemporary billionaires whose goal of unlimited wealth accumulation leaves workers feeling that the system is not designed to give them a fair shot.
- In the last year with available data, approximately 11,000 construction workers died by overdose, making overdose the top cause of death in the trades. When combined with deaths by suicide, construction workers are approximately 16 times more likely to die from those causes than from conventional workplace accidents. McCamley connected the mental health crisis directly to the physical demands of the work, which creates a pain-to-substance use pipeline, and the feeling among young men that the system is supposed to provide a fair shot is not doing so. That feeling, he said, is contributing to the fact that 40 million men are currently outside the American workforce entirely.
A Filibuster With a Dropkick Murphys Soundtrack
Bill McCamley served in the New Mexico House of Representatives, and one of his proudest moments came during the 2015 legislative session when a Republican majority attempted to eliminate Little Davis-Bacon, the state's prevailing wage law. McCamley was chosen as one of the floor speakers for the three-hour maximum debate. He decided to read the full lyrics of the Dropkick Murphys' Workers' Song — a track about the workers who build the bridges, fix the water mains and do the physical work of civilization, yet are the first to get cut when money gets tight.
The gallery was packed with members of the building trades. They cheered. The bill passed the House, but the floor fight had been so effective at framing the stakes that when it reached the Senate, it died there. New Mexico's prevailing wage protections remain in place today. McCamley said the experience reminded him of the motto he carries into everything he does: fair pay for fair work is not a complicated principle, and it is worth defending with every available tool.
The First Labor Union in America — and What Happened to It
McCamley used the Philadelphia Cordwainers as the entry point into a labor history lesson that runs from 1794 to the present. The Federal Society of Journeyman Cordwainers, established in Philadelphia in 1794 and recognized as the first formal labor union in the United States, represented leather workers and cobblers who organized to collectively advocate for their wages and working conditions. In 1806, members were charged with criminal conspiracy — not for any act of violence, but for demanding higher wages. They were found guilty.
The country's founders had just declared all men equal and endowed with unalienable rights, McCamley said. Then, 12 years later, asking your employer for more money was declared a criminal act. That tension, he said, is not just history. It is the thread that runs through every labor fight since.
Wage Theft: The Invisible Crime That Keeps Happening
McCamley brought his time as New Mexico Secretary of Labor into the conversation to address an issue he said is massive in scale and consistently underexamined: wage theft. A 2017 study found that minimum wage violations alone cost 2.4 million workers more than $8 billion annually — roughly $3,300 per affected worker per year. That represents about 17 percent of low-wage workers in the country. Those numbers do not include wage theft through worker misclassification, overtime violations or illegal deductions.
McCamley explained that for someone whose entire margin between stability and crisis is a few thousand dollars a year, losing $3,300 is significant. It could be the difference between making rent and not. Yet because the violation happens to individuals rather than in a single large visible event, it rarely generates the public attention it deserves. McCamley explained that the laws on the books are only as meaningful as the resources committed to enforcing them. Without enforcement, wage theft is effectively legal regardless of what the statute says.
The Gilded Age Never Really Ended
McCamley traced the concentration of wealth from the Gilded Age robber barons — Vanderbilt controlling the railroads, Rockefeller controlling oil through Standard Oil, Carnegie dominating steel — to the present moment. Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting efforts and FDR's New Deal labor protections interrupted that concentration for roughly half a century. McCamley argued that the cycle has come back around and that individuals like Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk may hold more concentrated power than their Gilded Age predecessors.
He referenced a story about a reporter who asked Rockefeller late in his life how much more money he needed. Rockefeller's answer: just a little bit more. McCamley said that answer captures something important about the difference between competition, which he described as healthy and necessary, and the drive to have someone under your boot, which is something different. When the goal is unlimited accumulation, the question of whether the system is working for everyone else becomes irrelevant to the person at the top.
The consequence for workers, he said, is a generation of young men who do not trust that the system is designed to give them a fair shot. Real wages have stagnated for decades while the gap between executive compensation and worker pay has grown to historic levels. For the first time in roughly a century, many children from working-class families in the 1980s are not as economically well off as their parents were. The result is approximately 40 million men currently outside the American workforce entirely — not on unemployment, not looking for work, just out.
The Mental Health and Overdose Crisis in the Trades
McCamley then connected the economic picture directly to the mental health and overdose crisis that is the primary focus of his current professional work. In the last year with available data, approximately 11,000 construction workers died by overdose, making it the top cause of death in the trades. Combined with deaths by suicide, construction workers are approximately 16 times more likely to die from those causes than from conventional workplace accidents.
Construction is physically demanding work that can lead to injury and pain over the years, McCamley said. Pain leads to self-medication, and that leads to substance use. Substance use leads to dependence, and underneath that, McCamley said, is the feeling that the system is not in place to give these workers a fair shot. They work hard, doing jobs that are genuinely essential to every piece of infrastructure everyone else depends on, and are not being valued for it. That feeling, he said, is one of the drivers of the mental health crisis and one of the reasons the crisis is so hard to address through training and peer support alone.
McCamley is currently working with the Texas Building Trades Health Foundation in addition to his New Mexico work, teaching the Vital Cogs suicide prevention program across the region. He said the most important thing the trades and the country can do to support workers’ mental health is to demonstrate, through wages, enforcement and genuine recognition, that the work matters and the workers who do it have value.
Bringing Young Men Into the Trades and Keeping Them There
McCamley also addressed the apprenticeship dropout rate in the trades. Between 40 percent and 60 percent nationally do not complete the free training. It’s a solvable problem, he said, that requires action on two fronts. Internally, the trades need to move away from the drill instructor mentality that drives new apprentices out and toward a more supportive model that maintains rigor without making the first years unnecessarily punishing. Externally, government can help by tripling investment in pre-apprenticeship programs, which data shows significantly improves retention, and by providing the same kind of financial support for trades apprentices — childcare, transportation, equipment — that exists for college students through grant programs.
He noted that 96 percent of workers who complete a building trades apprenticeship stay in the trades for the rest of their lives. The trade, once learned, is theirs. The problem is getting there.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is free, anonymous and available 24 hours a day. More information on the New Mexico Building Trades Wellness Coalition is available at nmbtwellness.org. McCamley's personal website is billmccamley.net.
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