Labour can solve the most significant problems facing the island including gang violence and the high cost of living, the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday.

During his last Labour Day address as the One Bermuda Alliance leader, Jarion Richardson added that the influence labour now has in Bermuda comes after decades of struggle and sacrifice.

He told a crowd at Union Square: “We are besieged not by forces we can negotiate with, but by forces that steal dignity from our people — the cost of living that crushes families, the gang violence that robs our young, the homelessness that now numbers more than 1,000 of our fellow citizens, the Bermudians who cannot afford a roof, a doctor or even healthy food.

“And so, my brothers and sisters, I say this plainly, there is no solution to these challenges that does not involve labour.

“Indeed, in this moment, the only group with the unity and strength to bend the course of this country is you.

“The same grit that built unions, that carried us through 1965 [the Belco riots] and 1981 [the General Strike] is the grit that can confront these national crises.”

Mr Richardson said that unions wield great power and that with such influence comes even greater responsibility.

He said: “You went from isolated pockets and besieged workers holding back injustice to shaping every commercial decision of worth on this island.

“The question is not whether labour has power, the question is what will labour do with that power?”

Mr Richardson said there will always be a need for labour unions in Bermuda, but the country is “calling for something more”.

Glenn Fubler, of activist group Imagine Bermuda, discussed solidarity and the importance of knowing history during yesterday’s celebration.

He said: “If the upcoming generation could understand from whence they came, then getting involved in groups like gangs, the control that they feel somebody has over them, they would not have that control because they would know who they are.

“That’s what’s so important, to have that sense of independence and reverence for the lives of everybody else.”

Derrick Burgess, former president of the Bermuda Industrial Union and Progressive Labour Party MP for Hamilton West from 1998 to 2025, and Edward Ball Jr, former president and general secretary of the Bermuda Public Services Union, received the first Honoree Acknowledgement Awards from the Joint Labour Day Committee yesterday.

Timothy Seon, the president of the Bermuda Trade Union Congress and the Prison Officers Association, said the awardees “fought the good fight and arduous journey to advance labour in Bermuda”.