For Robert “Bob” Dando Jr., a lifetime of involvement in organized labor and community service has largely come down to a simple philosophy: keep going.

“It’s perseverance,” Dando said. “It’s putting one foot in front of the other and just keep on going until you get it done.”

That perseverance, and decades spent advocating for working people throughout Chautauqua County, have earned Dando recognition as the recipient of the George Ritzer Memorial Labor Award.

Presented by the Jamestown Area Labor Council AFL-CIO, the award dates back to 1984 and recognizes an individual who has contributed to the labor movement while also volunteering time to community organizations. The award is named for longtime local labor leader George Ritzer, who served as president of the Jamestown Area Labor Council for more than 20 years and organized and served as president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1. The award will be presented at the City of Jamestown’s annual Labor Day Festival.

For Dando, learning he would join the notable list of past recipients came as a surprise. During a Labor Council Zoom meeting, Dando had actually been thinking about someone else he could nominate for the honor when the conversation unexpectedly turned toward him.

“Somebody else kind of piped in, ‘I was going to nominate Bob,’” he recalled. “I was totally surprised. I really appreciate it, and I feel honored by it.”

Dando’s path to Chautauqua County began in 1967, when he arrived to attend SUNY Fredonia. He graduated in 1971 after an active college career that included student organizations, Student Government and varsity wrestling. He went on to work at Red Wing, later Carriage House, in Fredonia from 1973 until his retirement in 2011. It was there that Dando’s long involvement with organized labor began.

“I didn’t really know much about unions until I wound up working at Red Wing,” he said.

He soon became a union steward, beginning years of work representing employees, participating in contract negotiations and serving in leadership roles. Dando eventually became president of NCFO Local 266 SEIU and also served as a general vice president on the Western New York Area Labor Federation Board. For Dando, however, union work was never simply about holding a title. Much of it was about advocating for individual workers when they needed someone in their corner.

“I’ve saved a lot of jobs over the years,” he said.

Those experiences also taught him the importance of understanding both sides of the negotiating table. Early in his union involvement, Dando recalled questioning a company vice president about why the company paid employees overtime rather than simply hiring additional workers. The conversation introduced him to costs associated with hiring that he had not previously considered.

“I understood that, and it helped me when I was negotiating contracts later on,” he said. “I understood where the company was coming from when they were talking about all these costs.”

That did not diminish his belief in the importance of organized labor. Dando said unions remain important in this day and age, as people still need their efforts on their behalf.

“That’s one of the good things about unions,” Dando said. “They fight for the workers, make sure the company sticks to the contracts and doesn’t take unfair advantage of them.”

His involvement in labor has extended well beyond his own workplace. Dando serves on the executive boards of both the Dunkirk and Jamestown Area Labor Councils and has been treasurer of the Dunkirk council since 2000, as well as Financial Secretary when the positions were combined in 2023. He has participated in picket lines and labor rallies across Western New York and has assisted other bargaining units during contract negotiations and labor disputes.

One cause that has remained particularly important to him is the Chautauqua County Workers’ Memorial. Dando has been involved with the organization since 2006 and has served as secretary/treasurer since 2010. Each year, the memorial gathers at Erlandson Overview Park in Frewsburg to remember Chautauqua County residents who died on the job. More than 180 names dating back to 1852 are now read during the annual service. Dando has helped research potential additions to the memorial, sometimes following tips from relatives or finding names buried in old newspaper accounts.

His service outside organized labor has been similarly extensive. An Eagle Scout himself, Dando spent years as an adult Scout leader, serving in roles that included Cubmaster, Scoutmaster, district commissioner and merit badge counselor. He coached youth wrestling in Fredonia, served nine years on the Northern Chautauqua United Way Board and three years on the New York State United Way Board. He currently serves on the Town of Pomfret Planning Board and Chautauqua County Parks Commission and is serving his second term as Exalted Ruler of Dunkirk Elks Lodge 922. Over the years, Dando said joining organizations became a way to meet people, form friendships and find opportunities to contribute.

That desire to get involved is something he hopes younger workers will carry forward. Dando said in many of the organizations he has been involved in, it has been somewhat difficult to attract younger people to get involved.

“Find out what your contract reads,” Dando advised. “Actually read it, know what your rights are, but get involved. Go to union meetings. Find out what’s happening, because decisions made at the union meetings affect you.”

Pictured: Among his many personal and professional feats, Dando rang the Roswell bell against cancer in 2025.

There is something bittersweet about Labor Day weekend in Chautauqua County.

The calendar says summer has a few weeks left, but we know better. The evenings get cooler. The sun disappears earlier. Baseball enters its stretch run, football takes over Friday nights and Sunday afternoons, and school buses return to our roads.

It is fitting that the holiday marking this transition is Labor Day because Western New York was built by labor — and, more specifically, by union labor.

For generations, a union card represented a pathway into the middle class here. Union jobs in steel plants, factories, construction sites, public works departments, schools, hospitals, utilities, and the skilled trades allowed working people to buy homes, raise families, send children to college, and retire with dignity.

Buffalo, Dunkirk, Jamestown, and the communities between them grew around people who made things, built things, moved things, and maintained things.

We should also acknowledge an uncomfortable part of our history: Western New York’s long economic decline coincided with the disappearance of many of those good-paying union jobs. Plants closed. Manufacturing moved. Union membership declined. Young people left looking for opportunity elsewhere. The consequences weren’t confined to individual workers. When good jobs disappeared, neighborhoods, Main Streets, schools, and entire communities felt the loss.

That history makes Labor Day more than another three-day weekend.

At Chautauqua Institution, another summer season has ended. Behind the concerts, lectures, theater, opera, and dance were stagehands represented by IATSE Local 266, alongside members of Buffalo’s IATSE Local 10. They hung lights, ran sound, moved scenery, and did the countless jobs required to make a Chautauqua summer possible.

Now, another union workforce takes over.

Unified University Professions (UUP) takes a large space in the middle of a quaint village and turns it into SUNY Fredonia, one of our county’s greatest economic assets that features a dedicated union workforce.

Teachers represented by New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) return to classrooms across Chautauqua County, alongside unionized bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, aides, clerical employees, and maintenance crews.

The buses they drive travel roads maintained by public employees represented by the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), including NYSDOT road workers and Chautauqua County highway crews based out of Mayville.

Our infrastructure carries the fingerprints of the building trades, too: Operating Engineers Local 17, whose members operate heavy equipment and perform construction and public-sector maintenance; Laborers Local 621 of LiUNA, which provides construction craft training and apprenticeships; and Iron Workers Local 6, representing ironworkers in northern Chautauqua County and the Buffalo area.

This year, when the Buffalo Bills take the field, they’ll do so in a brand-new Highmark Stadium — and Western New York should take particular pride in who built it.

Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 22, Laborers Local 210, Carpenters Local 276, Electricians Local 41, Operating Engineers Local 17, Ironworkers Local 6, Bricklayers Local 3, Sheet Metal Workers Local 71, Roofers Local 74, Insulators Local 4, Cement Masons Local 111, Painters and Finishers from District Council 4, Elevator Constructors Local 14, and Plasterers Local 9 all participated in its construction.

Different trades. Different skills. Different locals. One stadium.

It’s also worth noting that the very same players we cheer on Sundays are, themselves, represented by a union (NFLPA). Professional sports unions have often been trailblazers in the American labor movement.

When the television cameras sweep across that building this fall (cameras operated by unionized professionals) remember what it represents. Western New York can still build big things, and working people can still build good lives when skilled work is treated as something worthy of good wages, benefits, training, and respect.

Before long, winter will arrive, and CSEA-represented highway crews and other public employees will climb into snowplows while most of us sleep. They’ll keep roads open so ambulances reach hospitals, workers reach their jobs, and children reach their schools.

Members of the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Employees Association will be working, too, alongside thousands of other public employees whose jobs don’t stop for weekends, holidays, or snowstorms.

Labor Day exists because generations of workers organized for something better. The eight-hour day, the weekend, overtime, workplace safety, pensions, benefits, apprenticeships, and the basic principle that working people deserve a voice on the job weren’t gifts. Workers organized, negotiated, marched, struck, and sacrificed for them.

Western New York knows what strong organized labor can build because we live among the evidence.

And we know what happens when good-paying jobs disappear because we have lived through that, too.