UNITE HERE Local 100 handed Michael Blake his first major labor endorsement Tuesday, backing the Bronx challenger over incumbent Rep. Ritchie Torres in New York’s 15th Congressional District race.

The union’s 17,000 members work concession stands and hospitality posts at Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Madison Square Garden, and Barclays Center, with workers spread across both New York and New Jersey. That footprint, spanning two states and some of the borough’s most politically loaded addresses, means the endorsement isn’t just symbolic. In a Bronx district where organized labor still moves primary voters, this is the kind of backing that shows up on Election Day.

Union president José Maldonado posted the announcement to Instagram, calling Blake a “champion for working families.” He said Blake is “squarely focused on addressing a rigged economy at a time when many members in Congress are determined to preserve the status quo.” Dante de Blasio, son of former Mayor Bill de Blasio and the union’s political director, helped put the endorsement together. The elder de Blasio is also in Blake’s corner.

The timing wasn’t accidental.

The announcement came days after Blake stood with Local 100 members at an April 16 rally outside NHL headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Workers were protesting conditions at UBS Arena on Long Island, where they’ve been without a contract since Oct. 31, 2025. Management’s offer on the table: a 75-cent hourly raise. The union’s ask: at least $2.

Seventy-five cents. That’s what billions in arena revenue produced as an opening bid.

Attorney General Letitia James didn’t soften her take, saying in a statement that “a 75-cent hourly raise from a company that generates billions in revenue is an insult.” State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, City Comptroller Mark Levine, and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso also put out statements in support of the workers. City Council Member Lincoln Restler and former Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s running for Congress himself, showed up at the rally.

Blake didn’t let the league off the hook. “NHL needs to stop playing games,” he told the crowd. “Why are we still fighting for quality wages?” he said. “When corporate money and big money believe they’re more important than the people, we gotta set them straight.”

The UBS Arena dispute feeds directly into Blake’s case against Torres, and it’s got a dimension that anyone who’s ridden the 4 train home from a late game understands. These aren’t workers who live near the arena. Many commute from the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, spending real money and real hours each way to reach jobs where the pay hasn’t come close to keeping up with what rent, groceries, or a monthly MetroCard actually costs in 2026.

Blake told the Bronx Times that workers can’t keep waiting. He pointed to the 15 percent of New Yorkers who can’t cover basic essentials, a figure that hits differently when you’re talking to outer-borough riders on a late-night train. The argument he’s making isn’t complicated: Torres has been in Congress since 2021, and workers at a 100-percent-indoor arena less than 31 miles from City Hall are still fighting for a contract.

Maldonado’s framing of Blake as a “disruptor” signals what the union thinks the district needs. Torres won his seat in 2021, and he’s carried it since without a serious primary threat. Blake is trying to change that calculation, and the Local 100 endorsement gives him a structural asset: a network of 17,000 members who know how to knock doors, work phones, and get out the vote in exactly the neighborhoods Torres has counted on.

The primary won’t turn on a single union card. But Blake’s camp knows that building labor credibility early, before Torres can consolidate institutional support, is the strategy. The April 16 rally gave Blake a stage. The Local 100 endorsement gives him a ground game.

Workers at UBS Arena are still waiting on a contract.