More than 700 union construction workers and building trades employers paused work on May 2 on Boston’s largest jobsite in recognition of the industry’s mental health and substance use crisis. The stand down at the $1.9-billion clinical care facility being built on Massachusetts General Hospital’s campus concluded the fifth Recovery Week, hosted by city-based Building Trades Employers Association Northeast.

The event coincided with May’s National Mental Health Awareness Month and National Safety Week in the building trades.

Sponsored by health care system Mass General Brigham, Turner Construction Co., Walsh Brothers, Massachusetts Building Trades Unions, as well as several subcontracting firms, the Recovery Week program is “aimed at breaking stigma, promoting access to care and building a jobsite culture that values emotional and psychological safety as much as physical safety,” according to the employer group.

Dr. Sarah Wakeman, senior medical director for substance use disorder at Mass General Brigham and event guest speaker, said the industry should treat the jobsite as a frontline for recovery. “Meeting people where they are means recognizing that recovery doesn’t start in a hospital—it starts in communities, in conversations, in moments of compassion among peers,” she said. 

Thomas S. Gunning, Building Trades Employers Association Northeast. executive director, won an ENR Newsmaker award in 2023 for playing an instrumental role in convincing contractors to place rescue kits of the live-saving drug Narcan on jobsites to help workers at risk of overdosing on prescribed opioids after work injuries.