North Adams is a Union Town

For the first time in more than a half-century, pickets marched on Marshall Street, North Adams, past the gatehouse and red brick buildings that now house the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).

The pickets were part of a one-day strike on Friday, August 19 called by the unionized employees of MoCA, members of UAW Local 2110, to protest what they say is management’s failure to bargain in good faith.

I would have liked to be with those activists, but I now live in Philadelphia, having left North Adams in 2010 after a long career teaching at the state college.

A good friend sent me a video of the MoCA marchers and I heard them chant, “On strike, shut it down. North Adams is a union town.” I also heard the sound of blaring horns as residents signaled their support. In 1970, hundreds of Sprague industrial workers also walked the same path during a ten-week strike. Like their more youthful descendants, they enjoyed the help of their neighbors, who provided both material and moral support.

Yes, North Adams is a union town.

A day after the August 19 strike, I joined thousands of people attending an outdoor labor rally at Independence Mall, between Philly’s Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center.

The headliner was Senator Bernie Sanders, but what drove me to the event was the opportunity to hear two of national labor’s most vibrant and powerful speakers, President of the Association of Flight Attendants Sara Nelson and newly elected National President of the Teamsters Sean O’Brien.

The three of them were on a big city pro-labor tour, having already brought their message to Chicago and soon on to Boston. Before O’Brien spoke, Mary Adamson, a nurse for some 27 years and president of the Temple University Nurse’s Union, came to the podium. In remarks reminiscent of nursing complaints across the country, including calls at Berkshire Medical Center, she lambasted her employer for spreading nursing too thin then demanded good staffing ratios and a return to “focus on patient care, not profit.”

It was an easy transition to Sean O’Brien, a fourth-generation Teamster, a member since he was 18, who rode a wave of reformist sentiment within the 1.2 million member union, defeating the establishment candidate this past March.

O’Brien came across loud and clear—Boston accent and all—and had the audience with him when he attacked corporate America and “crooked politicians.” He spoke about an oncoming battle, a year from now when a new UPS contract for the 340,000 Teamsters who work there is up for negotiation.

O’Brien assured the crowd that they would be ready and would “inspire the rest of the country to fight.” Hearing that, I remembered the last UPS strike, in the summer of 1997. Under the banner, “Part-Time America Won’t Work,” the Teamsters demanded that part-timers get full-time jobs, that their pensions be improved, and that they be awarded significant wage increases.

I happened to be teaching a summer class in North Adams at that time, and in discussing the issues, I’d never had students so energized over labor issues. They knew about UPS, those brown trucks, what the work entailed, and the need for full-time work.

After 15 days, UPS caved, and the union won 10,000 new full-time jobs along with big pension and wage increases. I was, of course, happy with the union victory, but given the passion of class discussion, I secretly wished the strike had gone on a bit longer.

O’Brien handed the mike over to Sara Nelson, whom he rightly introduced as a “rock star.” Since 2014, Nelson has served as president of the nation’s biggest flight attendants union, with 50,000 members at nine different airlines.

Nelson achieved national attention in January 2019, when, during a President Trump-ordered government shutdown, she called for a “general strike” to end it.

She spoke of the safety issues, dangers of overworked TSA employees, and burned-out air traffic controllers; and with sick-in calls multiplying at two east coast airports, Trump and Congress capitulated.

It was probably the first time the words “general strike” were uttered by a top union leader since the immediate post-WWII period, and it showed labor leaders, the rank and file, as well as government and corporate leaders that Nelson was a force to be reckoned with.

A charismatic and energetic speaker, she criticized capitalism as “running amok” and warned her audience that the bosses will always try to use racism and sexism to divide us. Like O’Brien, she called for support and solidarity for all labor battles and spoke of her union’s current campaign to unionize Delta’s flight attendants.

Bernie came out to the roar of the crowd and took in the applause, with his arms around O’Brien and Nelson. It was a classic Bernie campaign speech, the need to take on the oligarchy, the “moral outrage” over the obscene wealth gap, the need to fight back and stand up as “the working class,” and to make the system work for all. To the recorded song “Power to the People,” the rally ended, though the crowd lingered.

Bernie is 80, O’Brien is 50, and is Nelson 49. The audience that heard them on that hot day in Philadelphia, however, looked to be mostly in their 20s and 30s.

So three generations with the wisdom of age, the experience and energy of middle age, and the curiosity and activism of youth. Back in North Adams, the 100 or so members of the MoCA union look to be young as well. They are learning on the job the value of solidarity and the courage to speak their mind. The Local they belong to has not only organized museum workers in Boston, Portland, Maine, and New York, but has contracts covering over 3,000 workers in higher education, publishing, and law.

In the 1930s, the upsurge in a left-wing political party and industrial union organizing pushed FDR and Congress to enact the New Deal. Throughout the war years and early 1950s, union membership continued to grow, reaching a peak of nearly 35 percent of the workforce in 1954.

Since then decline has set in, and now only about 10 percent of U.S. workers belong to unions. Of note, neither Bernie, O’Brien, nor Nelson mentioned the Democratic Party or talked about voting.

Their strategy speaks more to the grassroots and organized movements of the 1930s to demand progressive change. It’s a different era now, more service sector than industrial, more white collar than blue collar. But the issues remain the same: a living wage, fair treatment, job security, and respect.

Those issues resonate with members of a union that’s been around since 1903, the Teamsters, as well as with members of a relative newcomer like UAW Local 2110, along with activists at Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s. Now, with all of that intergenerational energy combined with a tight labor market, the opportunity for what sociologist Dan Clawson called “The Next Upsurge” awaits us. If it is seized, communities across the U.S. will join Philly and North Adams and will be called union towns.