A union carpenter, paid $17.50 an hour plus benefits, he made up to $50,000 a year.

There was a union carpenter who had been forced to go without health insurance rather than take a cut in salary.

He previously worked in a steel mill and is now a union carpenter.

Her father was a union carpenter in the Bronx.

He worked as a union carpenter specializing in residential remodeling.

(In addition to his men, about 100 union carpenters from Local 11 also worked without charge.)

Wages and benefits for union carpenters often total $65 an hour; those not paid the union rate can earn less than half that amount.

"It was about changing our lives," Mark Erlich, a labor organizer and union carpenter, said.

About 800 hourly people, like union carpenters and electricians, will be transferred to Tishman.

Every spare dollar that he earned as a union carpenter went into his savings, and he was going to use the money to build himself a house.