These overnight transatlantic flights get tougher as the years pile up, and so am just now having the opportunity from Belfast, to salute the trade union champions honoured at the Irish Echo Labor Awards in the Edison Ballroom, Times Square, New York on 18 September.
And while on the subject, to reveal a little more about our bold plans to mark the Irish Echo centenary in 2028 with a special, portable exhibition paying tribute to the pivotal role of the Irish in the American labour movement over the past one hundred years.
I am struck at how incongruous it seems to Irish audiences to hear of awards recognising the contribution of the Irish to the American trade union movement but then that's another area where our two countries separate.
SERVICE: Chris Lalevee receives his Irish Labor Ambassador plaque from Tim Crane of the IUOE
For in the USA, 'the labour movement', thankfully, remains central to economic and social life and key to ensuring a fair standard of living for millions of families - or as they put it in the U.S., "enjoying a middle class lifestyle".
'Middle class' in Ireland is rarely used as a term in the same way, generally seen as referring to the professional classes.
But a middle class life, underpinned by union membership in the U.S., translates into having pensionable employment and earning enough to enjoy a holiday, take out a mortgage and put children through school and college. And of course, in the US, it also guarantees the holy grail: health insurance.
IN FULL VOICE: Honoree Tom Kelly, President Passaic County Central Labor Council addresses the audience. 
Without unions, those building blocks of a successful life would be denied to millions in America and without Irish America, the labour movement would be immeasurably weaker.
So the annual Irish Echo awards pay due homage to these amazing champions of Irish America and of trade unionism.
At this year's event, I got to meet one of my great heroes of the American labour movement, the unassuming Mary Kay Henry who has just stepped down from presidency of the two-million-member Service Employees International Union.
We met first at a roundtable chat for honourees and guest speakers, kindly hosted by Gerald Angley and Katie Daughan, Consul General and Deputy General Consul respectively at the powerhouse Consulate of Ireland in New York.
From our brief encounter, Ms Henry strikes me as being inspired by the social justice Irish Catholic tradition and I'm grateful to her for introducing me to the Catholic Worker newspaper which still sells for one cent - proof, if proof were needed, that profit is not God.
TEAMSTER TRADITION: Maura Drumm of Philadelphia works with Teamsters press office and comes from a long line of Teamster union members. She was presented with her award by Teamster chief of staff Brian Rainville
Unlike Ireland, many Irish America trade unionists are inspired by the two Pope Leos: the current incumbent from the Windy City who rails against the dangers to ordinary people of AI and his 19th Century predecessor whose 1891 Rerum novarum addressed the condition of the working class.
In a previous life, I tried to put down a motion in the Stormont Assembly to debate Prop Francis' encyclical Fratelli Tutti (Brothers and Sisters All) which contains the cautionary words of advice: "The rights of some to free enterprise or market freedom cannot supersede the rights of people and the dignity of the poor", only to be rebuffed by trade union supporters! Forks in the road between the Irish radical tradition in the US and Ireland!
To point: Bob Reiter, President of the Chicago Federation of Labor who was honoured at the Irish Echo gala was just back from Rome where he had met Pope Leo at a Vatican conference on the rights of workers.
There were many other outstanding honourees including the inspirational operating engineer Chris Lalevee who was reared Irish Catholic by a French stepdad and who combines union activism with combatting addiction among union members and serving as a Christian minister.
I salute them all and look forward to taking up International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) honouree Tom Kelly on invite to the American Labor Museum in Patterson, New Jersey.
For that would be the perfect spot to stage the Irish Echo 'Labor and Irish America' exhibition planned for 2028 to mark our centenary. A recent meeting of the Irish Echo 100 committee in New York on the morning of the gala, set out proposals for a meaningful celebration of Irish America's journey over 100 stirring years with the story of trade unions at its core - thankfully, Teamsters' legal counsel David O'Brien Suetholz from Kentucky, who was honoured at the 2025 Labor Gala, put his hand up to volunteer to help make this happen. (At least, I think he was agreeing to help, he may just have been asking permission to go to the bathroom!)
NO PARTY WITHOUT PUNCH: This author at the podium for what is the biggest awards event of the year for the Irish Echo
I always come away inspired by the Irish Echo Labor Award honourees — by the surprising emotion in heartfelt speeches (another thing you rarely witness in Ireland); by the pride of the honorees in lives spent serving workers; by their enormous love of Ireland and of the Irish of America — and delighted that, in troubled and uncertain times, we can always be sure, here in faraway Belfast, that we have Irish American labour in our corner.
