Meet Lavon Chambers, executive director of Pathways to Local 79-affiliate Apprenticeship (P2A), recent retiree, and 2023 Labor Breakfast honoree. Oh, and a proud father and husband, he adds.
His résumé boasts time as an assistant director for the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust and an officer for the Laborers International Union of North America for more than two decades.
His two favorite things? Helping people attain family-sustaining careers and strengthening communities.
A lifelong union organizer and Laborers Local 79 member, Chambers develops the generation of trade talent by helping low-income New Yorkers enter union building trades apprenticeship programs. These programs create pathways for those living in NYCHA housing and reentering the workforce after incarceration.
Such work started after Chambers left the army and stumbled on the Harlem Fight Back offices. He took to organizing and striking like a fish to water, but endured racism the higher he climbed in the labor ranks—back when he started, over 90% of Local 79 members were white.