Aileen Fitzpatrick, a nurse practitioner, stands next to a lab during the unveiling of a new health and wellness center by The United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
The United Association Local 7 unveiled its new health and wellness center with a party on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
The United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, unveiled its new health and wellness center on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
Edward Nadeau, business manager at the United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, at the unveiling of a new health and wellness center on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
The United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, unveiled its new health and wellness center with a party on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
The United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, unveiled its new health and wellness center with a party on Saturday, May 16, 2026, in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie, NY. (Jim Franco/Times Union)
Jim Franco/Times Union
Tyler Waterhouse, a member of the United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, at the unveiling of a new health and wellness center on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
An examination room in the new health and wellness center unveiled by the United Association Local 7, which represents nearly 1,400 commercial plumbers, steamfitters, pipefitters and sprinkler fitters across the Capital Region, on Saturday in the Capital Region Health Park at 113 Troy-Schenectady Road in Colonie.
Jim Franco/Times Union
COLONIE — United Association Local 7 held a grand opening Saturday for its new no-cost health clinic for union members and their families.
The clinic, called the Local 7 Health & Wellness Center, started seeing patients a few months ago. It is located in 2,500 square feet of space on the first floor of the Capital Region Health Park on Troy-Schenectady Road in Latham. It is less than a mile away from Local 7’s headquarters.
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A company called Marathon Health staffs the office with a nurse practitioner and medical assistant five days a week, including late nights, with rotating weekend appointments.
Local 7 has 1,400 members who work as skilled plumbers, steamfitters, pipe fitters and sprinkler fitters at construction sites and for companies and contractors across a 10-county area around Albany.
“The biggest thing we are hoping to achieve is a happy and healthy membership,” Ed Nadeau, business manager of Local 7, told the Times Union in an interview in the clinic’s waiting room.
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Several factors made the union’s board of trustees vote to approve the clinic, Nadeau said. Some members have a regular primary care doctor, but others do not. The clinic is available free of charge to members and their families, regardless of whether they already go to another practice.
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The office can provide medical and wellness screenings for preventive care, do blood work and handle physicals for both adults and children. It also offers sick-care appointments. The clinic has a small pharmacy with commonly-prescribed medicines that can be dispensed on-site.
“We want to make sure there is a place where they can go for primary care that doesn’t take going to the emergency room for non-emergency visits,” Nadeau said. “We want to make sure we have a place for our members to come to make sure they are healthy.”
These highly-trained workers, who go through five years of apprenticeship training, are in high demand in New York, union officials said. Decades’ worth of large-scale commercial building projects have been planned or are underway upstate, they said. Almost all of them use union labor.
In order to be able to fulfill all of the expected work for highly-skilled plumbers and pipe fitters, the union needs to recruit hundreds more workers to fill its ranks. And the new health clinic offering is a benefit that the union thinks stands out at a time when consumers are facing rising health insurance costs.
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The projects include the construction of the new $1.7 billion home of the Wadsworth Center, the state’s famed public health lab, at the Harriman State Office Campus in Albany. GlobalFoundries is also spending $16 billion on its Saratoga County and Vermont computer chip factories, including adding a second factory at its Fab 8 campus in Malta.
Local 7 also has a long history of providing trades workers to contractors at Albany NanoTech, where NY Creates is nearing completion of the $614 million NanoFab Reflection building that will be home to a new $10 billion computer chip research program, which garnered $1 billion in state funding. The state is also looking at approving the construction of new nuclear plants across New York, and Micron Technology is building a $100 billion “megafab” outside of Syracuse that would provide decades of work as well.
A steady stream of union members and their young families came to the grand opening, which featured a food truck, a DJ, raffles and pickleball.
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Tyler Waterhouse, a service technician at a local employer who has been a member of Local 7 since 2019, said he got a physical about a month ago and made the appointment through an app on his phone. He said it’s a great added benefit.
“I mean, you look at every other job and all other medical providers and they’re cutting benefits,” Waterhouse said.