Patrick-Murray Administration Applauds Labor Guild’s Recognition of Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, Suzanne M. Bump

BOSTON - The Patrick-Murray Administration is pleased to announce that Suzanne M. Bump, the Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, has been honored by the Labor Guild, an ecumenical organization sponsored by the Archdiocese of Boston. She will receive the 2009 Boyle Award named for the long-term director of the Labor Guild of the Boston Archdiocese, Father Edward F. Boyle. He spent years emphasizing the need for cooperation in labor-management relations.

Boyle succumbed to cancer on November 13, 2007 at age 76. Even as his health declined in the last months of life, he led the Guild’s Executive Board in developing a new vision of the Guild’s role, one that would continue to reflect the critical problems facing workers, employers, and the economy today. Now, the award dedicated to his legacy is annually bestowed upon one outstanding legal counselor, labor educator, or public agency leader who continues to improve the labor-management climate.

The Boyle Award is given to outstanding professionals for the competence, vision, and integrity they bring to the advancement of healthy and productive labor-management relations. This award will be presented to Secretary Suzanne Bump by the Labor Guild when they hold their 43^rd annual Cushing-Gavin Awards Dinner on November 6, 2009in Boston. Secretary Bump said that it will be a poignant moment: “This award is a great honor. As working people and their families face such difficulties, we must recommit to all of the values that the Labor Guild represents.” The Secretary added that this is a great honor as she and her husband are the first wife and husband team to be honored in the Labor Guild’s nearly 70 years. Her husband, Paul McDevitt also received the award now known as the Boyle Award in 1995.