[[{“value”:”

By: Siobhan McDonough

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

CAMBRIDGE — Last Monday, community members crowded into Cambridge City Hall to voice our support for a proposed resolution calling for an end to the U.S.’s devastating Cuba blockade. Cambridge City Councillors and democratic socialists Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Ayah Al-Zubi, along with Councillor Marc McGovern, proposed the resolution.

In opposition to her colleagues, Councillor Patty Nolan cut off discussion using her “charter right” authority, which postpones further debate to the Council’s next meeting on May 11, 2026. Councillor Nolan argued the Council had no business addressing foreign policy:

I do not believe that the City Council should deliberate or use time during regular business meetings on foreign policy issues, which I see this as.

Councillor Nolan is correct that the Cuba blockade, in a very narrow sense, is about foreign policy. Cambridge’s action on this resolution is, by itself, insufficient to force the Trump administration to change its posture toward Cuba. The people of Cambridge, like most people in the United States, have almost no say in our federal government’s aggression toward other countries. The president dictates U.S. foreign policy in practice. Trump, without Congressional approval, kidnapped Venezuelan President Maduro and started a catastrophic war with Iran. Just last week, he unilaterally issued an executive order expanding international sanctions on those participating in the Cuban economy. 

The U.S. awards its globe-spanning military and economic apparatus to the winner of the Electoral College, a system which makes most U.S. citizens’ presidential votes essentially meaningless. Through the anti-democratic Electoral College, both Republican presidents this century first came into office with fewer votes than their opponent. Winning that non-democratic institution also authorizes presidents to pick lifetime appointees to the Supreme Court. The Court gave itself the power of judicial review to strike down acts of Congress, but on foreign policy, courts allow presidents free rein by consistently refusing to enforce laws that limit presidential acts of war.

Nominally, Congress should be able to represent popular will and thwart presidential warmongering. However, both chambers of Congress—the Senate and the House—have their own barriers to popular input. The Senate prioritizes the representation of land over the representation of people and protects its members from voters with six year terms. Thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s rulings in Rucho and Callais, the House is an ever-worsening mess of gerrymandered safe seats designed to entrench the status quo and disenfranchise non-white voters. Corporations and elite interest groups flood the Senate and House with campaign contributions to offset popular pressure. Altogether, it’s no wonder that popular will has almost no impact on federal policy compared to the preferences of economic elites.

But that’s exactly why we must act. When the state of U.S. democracy itself is so woeful, representative governing bodies like the Cambridge City Council must use their democratic legitimacy to serve as a voice for the community’s values on such crucial issues as the lives and freedom of the Cuban people facing the deep violence and social murder of the blockade. The democratic structures of the Cambridge City Council are relatively strong, compared to the non-democratic ones above. Instead of gerrymandered single-member districts, we have a proportional City Council that represents the ideological diversity of Cambridge voters and open, public council meetings that begin with an opportunity for residents to be heard. 

Our democracy in Cambridge is far from perfect. We do not allow non-citizens to vote, we do not have automatic or same-day voter registration, and our unelected City Manager retains far too much power over the budget and city operations. Wealthy donors and corporate interests hold too much sway in the political process. Still, the City Council remains the best institutional voice Cambridge residents collectively have.

Our city’s residents overwhelmingly oppose the oppressive U.S. blockade of Cuba. As Trump ratchets up sanctions while openly threatening that “Cuba is next,” we demand our institutions push back on the violence done in our names. With Congress non-responsive, that duty falls to the representative Cambridge City Council.

Cambridge community members should show up in force at City Hall once again on May 11 at 5:30pm to demand Cambridge City Council affirms our city’s anti-imperialist values.

Siobhan McDonough is the treasurer for Boston Democratic Socialists of America, the trustee chair for the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (UAW 2320), and a civil rights attorney for working-class people.

The post OPINION: Cambridge Can and Must Take Action To Oppose the Cuba Blockade on May 11 appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]] 

By: W.J.

I found my way to a Metro Detroit DSA meeting through my work with one of the ballot initiatives the chapter endorsed last year. Another volunteer and I were there to give our pitch and try to recruit MDDSA members as petition gatherers. What struck me when I opened the door to Ant Hall was how packed it was — all the seats were full. It was standing room only. I’m a bigger guy, so I had to “ope” and “pardon me” my way from the front door to a tight corner off to the side, navigating around to the counter space where we’d set up our computer to record new volunteers and set out our clipboards and petitions.

As we got ourselves ready before the start of the general meeting, we were approached by one of the many leaders of the chapter, Jess Newman. Jess came to check in with us, made sure we had everything we needed, and gave us a rundown of how the meeting would go and when we’d be beckoned forward to make our pitch.

We were all set. Jess told us that we’d be called up front near the end of the meeting, before members would be released for the post-meeting social. With nothing to do for a bit, I decided to putz around Ant Hall and check out the meeting, not quite sure what to expect. I walked in right after the emcee got done asking new members to stand and ask what got them interested in DSA. The answers I heard were about what I’d expected: Some “recovering” Democrats, others who were unaffiliated with the two parties had just had enough and wanted to be productive, and a few who weren’t quite sure but wanted to come see what the Democratic Socialists of America were all about. Regardless of the passion or certainty in their responses, all received fervent applause and smiles from their new comrades.

I went back to the main hall after a few minutes and noticed that they’d started a panel to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Their discussion sat with me for a good long while. I’d paid some attention to what was going on over there, passively looking at the news and reading the occasional article that made it into my feed. Listening to the panelists describe the history of the occupation and the atrocities committed after the October 7th attack left me angry. Angry at my country for enabling it and angry with myself for being powerless to do anything about it.

Then the conversation changed. They talked about various humanitarian organizations on the ground, and how we, an assembly sitting in Hamtramck, could support them. There was some relief at the mention of direct action we could take, but a mix of anger and dread remained.There was a look of quiet defiance on the faces of the membership that I noticed during this panel, and I realized that I was in a space filled with people that weren’t just going to sit quietly and listen about atrocities happening and go on about their day afterwards. With that realization came some reassurance and a lingering curiosity: what would I do next?

The meeting continued. As it neared the end, Jess returned to the front with a few others to talk about the on-going petition drives within Michigan For The Many. I think the meeting had gone over time, because she proceeded to give a quick overview of each one herself instead of calling up reps to go over them (which I didn’t mind at all). What did catch me off guard was Jess calling the group’s attention to me as not only an organizer for my group, but also a future DSA member, which received a small applause. I was feeling a bit mischievous, so I smiled and said, “We’ll see.” I actually already had the membership page up on my phone and was just going back and forth on the pledge amount for a sustaining member. Afterwards, I joined my partner at the counter and signed up about a dozen comrades to carry our petition. It was not a bad day at all.

After the meeting, we packed up, and I was hungry. At Jess’s recommendation, we went to Yemen Cafe down the street, where I ate entirely too much. While I was waiting for my check, I unlocked my phone, set my pledge amount, and skimmed the page welcoming me to DSA.

So why did I join? It was being in community with others. Sharing a space that made me believe that a better world is possible, and knowing there’s over a thousand Metro Detroiters organizing to make it so.

Why I Joined DSA: To be on the Right Side of History was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[[{“value”:”

By: Frederick Reiber

CAMBRIDGE — Harvard students are in their reading period in advance of finals as Harvard’s graduate union representing workers in around sixty programs of departments across the university surge to the end of their third week on a historic strike at the world’s richest university. Seeking to continue escalating pressure following a 79% turn out with 96% of its membership in favor of militant strike action for the union’s demands in April, workers have escalated to withholding teaching and research, disrupting end of semester activities, and slowing operations.

The Harvard Graduate Student Union (HGSU) – UAW Local 5118 strikes as other unions on campus have so far chosen other strategic routes in negotiations, despite the potential for contract alignment, but anger over workplaces issues in the rank-and-file movements is increasing across campus and its surrounding communities. The university focused entirely on attacks from above increasingly faces dissent from below.

And since workers make Harvard run, ultimately, the workers’ threat demands the university’s attention.

Demands for Dignity and Against ICE

HGSU has been bargaining for a total of 14 months, with only two tentative agreements—one on access to space for office hours and another on holidays, personal days, and vacation. Harvard has refused to bargain over issues including access to ADA-compliant spaces, union representation in cases of intellectual property disputes, rights to healthcare, and academic freedom. The university has also denied workers the right to open bargaining, recognizing the potential for increased worker power when negotiations are not done behind closed doors. 

The current campaign has coalesced around four primary demands:

First is the creation of an independent process for addressing workplace harassment, discrimination, and bullying. Union data estimates that at least one in five student workers experiences some form of harassment as researchers and teachers, while Harvard currently controls the only formal channels for reporting and resolving those cases. Graduate workers are calling for access to a neutral, third-party system, with the ability to appeal to an independent arbitration with the authority to issue binding remedies.

Workers spoke to the need for Real Recourse. In anonymous testimony published by HGSU, one student worker reported:

“I was repeatedly told I didn’t have a good Title IX case because I had a previous relationship with my harasser and because I was not assaulted. Though they suggested I could get help from CAMHS, there was no action taken to address my concerns or protect future victims… The person who harassed me did end up assaulting someone else about a year after I went to the Title IX office. If the university had acted on my concerns when I brought them, they could have prevented an assault. The way that the university failed me and the other members of my department in this process is incredibly frustrating… If I had had union representation to support me as I navigated the process, I believe I could have stood up for myself better.”

Second is the implementation of a “fair share fee.” This clause would require all workers covered by the contract to contribute to the costs of union representation, regardless of membership status. Doing so helps to spread the substantial costs of organizing and contract enforcement more equitably, helping to sustain the union’s operations. Such fees are common in states without anti-labor right-to-work laws, including Massachusetts.

Workers are also demanding wage increases, setting a baseline of $55,000 for all graduate student employees. RAs and TFs at peer schools such as MIT, Stanford, and Princeton make far more while boasting smaller endowments than a university located in the country’s most expensive city. In addition to a higher base pay, workers are calling for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) which ties annual raises to inflation, ensuring wages keep pace with rising expenses over the life of the contract. Similar clauses have been won at other universities. Organizers demand a living wage with COLA adjustment that reflects the realities of living and working in Boston’s high-cost environment while addressing longstanding pay disparities. Right now, research-based positions earn roughly $40,830, compared to about $26,300 over ten months for graduate workers in teaching roles—a gap the union argues is unjustified given the university’s reliance on both forms of labor.

Harvard heavily discourages and often forbids other forms of employment. Nonetheless, during bargaining with HGSU, university representatives called the living wage demand “unreasonable.” Harvard indicated in bargaining that its top priority is growing its endowment, even as the university during the same November 7, 2025 session rejected the union’s requests to bargain for paid family leave, healthcare during leaves, and full compensation for RAs and TFs whose appointments cancel last minute, necessary for financial stability for the most vulnerable student workers.

Harvard University has an endowment of $56.9 billion.

Finally, the union is demanding stronger protections for international student workers, with organizers pointing to an increasingly hostile national climate, including intensifying immigration enforcement and right-wing political attacks, which leave non-citizen workers vulnerable. Crucially, the union is fighting back against a university that has bowed to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant culture war demands. Of course, that also means that HGSU’s inclusion of the fight against ICE in its organizing forces Harvard University into the position of raising the stakes of its choice to hold its head down and hope the White House stops beating its crimson walls.

The demand to protect immigrant workers has, in many ways, crystallized into the nexus of the union’s fight. In June 2025, HGSU introduced into contract negotiations a call for Harvard to safeguard I-9 forms, fund legal counsel, and prevent ICE agents from entering spaces without a valid judicial warrant. Some students pointed out the University of California has held these policies for a decade.

The Structural Challenges of Organizing in Academia

Organizing at a university presents many unique challenges. Workers contend with an uncertain legal landscape, as the current National Labor Relations Board has a Republican majority, which may revoke graduate students’ dual status as students and laborers. In order to help avoid such an outcome, graduate worker unions across the country have pulled numerous unfair labor practice charges in an attempt to limit such a ruling. 

One effect of this is that workers at Harvard are now on what is considered—in legal terminology—an “economic” strike. Unlike an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike, which provides legal protections around employee replacement, economic strikes have no such protections allowing employers to—theoretically—higher permanent replacements for striking workers. While such action is unlikely, the inability to use ULPs can negatively impact organizing and outcomes.

Challenges also appear at the community level, with workers needing to overcome a highly dispersed workplace, with social connections often centered around the academic department. These siloes compound the experiences of academic workers as isolated and overextended, needing to balance multiple responsibilities, and challenges around how the broader ivory tower and surrounding communities view academic work. Indeed, Harvard has attempted to weaponize these characteristics. The university forcefully removed more than 800 student workers from the union, refusing to recognize their employment status, during a series of restructurings and reclassifications that multiple staff in multiple unions described to Working Mass as latent attacks by the university on its own workers in July 2025. These included also capitulation to federal demands including the closure of offices serving communities of color on campus, which HGSU bargaining committee member Denish K. Jaswal pointed out to the Crimson.

The answer to overcoming structural obstacles for HGSU organizers was an organizing model focused on developing strong inter-personal relationships through one-on-one conversations. As grad worker Marley Hornewer explained:

It’s a lot more one-on-one conversation than in any other organizing I’ve done before. [You need to be] really accepting of the fact that organizing takes time […] folks have so much else that they’re doing that responding to a text or getting coffee with you isn’t necessarily a priority, but when it happens […] it feels so powerful to people to see themselves as a worker.

Jessica Van Meir, a TF at the Harvard Kennedy School, emphasized the ways in which organizing and the strike has transformed rank-and-file grad workers, whose anger at the university on behalf of every demand increases with each day of evidence from Harvard of its own obfuscation:

The outpouring of participation in the strike and refusal to cave to the administration’s scaremongering demonstrates that graduate student workers understand our importance to the university. Harvard can easily end the strike and restore business as usual by offering us a living wage, independent arbitration for harassment and discrimination cases, and protections from ICE coming on campus without a judicial warrant. But until then, no teaching, no grading, no research assistant work. How embarrassing to have to explain that to the parents who are forking over their retirement savings for their children’s education. The choice is Harvard’s.

Creative Strategies for a Community Organization

Harvard workers have deployed numerous creative and community-based strategies for the purposes of solidarity. For instance, striking workers have been blocking deliveries, a tactic in which workers will form a picket line outside of university docking sites. Drivers attempting to deliver Harvard’s packages from unionized or pro-labor workplaces like UPS or USPS will refuse to cross a picket-line, either through previously established union contracts or out of solidarity for the workers, which disrupts university operations and pressures administrators to come to the table.

HGSU has also run a number of teach-ins, covering topics like labor history, socialist activism at Harvard, and an intro to agency or “fair-share” fees. One was an Undergraduate Strike School on April 24. Workers have also launched a number of community events focused on bringing in both academic and local communities into their struggle.

One of the largest events was the first week community rally, hosted on April 23rd at the Science Center Plaza, the day before the Undergraduate Strike School. A wide range of speakers representing labor unity spoke, including current HGSU president sara speller as well as brother and sister unions at Harvard including Harvard Academic Workers (HAW) and SEIU 32BJ and UNITE-HERE Local 26. The unions were also joined by organizers from the Harvard Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Coalition and undergraduates from the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM).

The event also featured a number of local and state politicians including Massachusetts State House Rep Mike Connolly, DSA-endorsed Cambridge City Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, as well as challenger for incumbent Marjorie Decker’s seat and former HGSU president Evan MacKay. City Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler said, during his speech:

I’m glad to stand here and deliver the message… if Harvard wants Cambridge to have its back, its gotta have the back of its workers.

Various other university communities have also thrown support behind the striking graduate workers. Earlier this week, around 200 first year Harvard Law School students signed letters urging their professors to press the University to come to the table with the union. Faculty—albeit at significantly smaller numbers—have also signaled their support to the striking graduate workers, agreeing not to replace or retaliate against workers on strike.

Diverging Strategies in a Shared Fight

Harvard’s graduate workers are not alone in facing an expired contract, or the brunt of the Harvard administration. Other Harvard bargaining units are also embroiled in contract fights, but have taken different tacts to striking. While multiple bargaining units are affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) that have pioneered the strategy of coordinating unions to strike when bargaining happens at the same time and now lead the charge for contract alignment on May Day 2028, strategic contract alignment has not been on the table at Harvard.

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), the largest union on campus representing over 5000 administrative workers essential to the university’s operations whose members often work closely alongside HGSU members, is scheduled to vote on May 12–13 on a modest agreement that would grant most members a $2,300 raise and expire after one year. The union has proposed this contract to membership after Harvard’s central fundraising office laid off a dozen HUCTW union members and announced mass summer layoffs likely to decimate HUCTW’s ranks. David Deming later confirmed the intent to target union workers in an open forum, where the Dean of Harvard College called essential labor work that “you would never really know or care about.” In one email obtained by Working Mass, HUCTW organizer Bill Jaeger intervened to ask members to vote yes on the proposed contract, while the HUCTW Rank-and-File Movement, focusing on building up the leadership of rank-and-file members over the union, publicly urged membership to remember “we can’t eat prestige” and instead vote no on May 6, 2026.

HUCTW has urged members to turn down work that managers ask them to perform that would normally be done by grad workers – crossing the picket line – but indicated members should continue to do “their own jobs as usual.” When asked about HUCTW, multiple organizers with HGSU declined to comment about their relationship with the other union.  

Harvard custodians with 32BJ SEIU ratified a 4-year contract in March that union leaders called the “biggest wage increase in decades:” a 4% hourly raise by 2029. While Harvard dining hall workers went on strike in 2016, their 500 rank-and-file workers affiliated with UNITE HERE Local 26 have not yet chosen that route even as their negotiations have dragged into. Most controversially, members of the Harvard Academic Workers (HAW) – UAW —a unit of non-tenure-track researchers and instructors that has been bargaining for 18 months—recently decided not to strike. In a controversial move, HAW’s bargaining committee overrode the vote of membership after citing concerns on sufficient votes for strike authorization and uncertainty about support from the union international. This decision was made by a bargaining committee made up of rank-and-file members after consultation with UAW staff.

The union also recently filed a Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against Harvard. 

At the same time, workers within HGSU praised the academic workers’ commitment to solidarity and struggle. One worker said:

I do feel a lot of solidarity from them. We’re fighting for a lot of the same things … and continuing to work together towards a more just academic environment generally.

Whatever the tactical differences, these parallel struggles underscore the broader potential for cross-union solidarity and coordinated fights that can reshape power across the university. Further, every single union shares an employer – one seemingly intent on facing, and then offsetting, the wrath of the federal administration onto its staff.

Higher Education, Labor, and Struggle

Higher education is not a refuge from conflict, but a site of struggle. As Harvard PhD candidate Laura Chen put it:

Every morning when we do delivery pickets and get to cheer for the Teamsters as they turn their trucks around for us, it’s incredible. It’s so fun. And getting to explain to various burly truck drivers why we’re with the UAW – delightful.

These moments capture something larger than a single strike. They show how academic workers are linking up with a broader labor movement, building relationships that extend beyond the university.

At a moment when higher education is defined by precarity, political attacks, and deepening inequality, these contract fights are about more than pay or procedure – they are battles over the basic necessities of life and worker humanity. What is unfolding in higher education organizing is not an isolated conflict, but part of a wider struggle over power and dignity.

Readers can support grad workers by joining them on the picket line, held each day, or contributing to the union hardship fund.

Frederick Reiber is a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post Harvard Faces Grad Workers’ Strike as Discontent with the University Rises From Below appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]] 

This guide explains the AI issues facing workers and how they can organize for a voice in how it's implemented at work.

The post How to protect your job from AI overreach in the workplace appeared first on EWOC.

An Italy-based writer and activist on the recent pro-Palestine and antiwar protests in Italy, their impact on the Meloni government, and how the “Gaza Generation” is revitalizing the Italian Left.

The post The Gaza Generation and the Italian Left: Democratic Left Interviews Michael Leonardi appeared first on Democratic Left.

A new documentary shows what workplace democracy can look like through the lens of the Teamsters’ epochal 2023 contract fight with UPS.

The post A Moving Picture appeared first on Democratic Left.

By Jane Slaughter

Meeting members of UAW Member Action, the reform group within the UAW, makes me remember why we’re doing this socialism thing. On a recent weekend their steering committee met in Southwest Detroit. People came from Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, New York state, as well as around Michigan — and not all of the 40 or so members were even on the steering committee. They just wanted to be part of the action.

UAW Member Action was founded a year ago, after the previous reform group, UAWD, dissolved over internal differences over what a reform caucus should be. It was sad, because UAWD had done great work to help get Shawn Fain’s slate elected to the union’s executive board in 2022–23.

But leaders regrouped and founded UMA with the mission of educating members and training new leaders. Despite Fain’s big win at the top in 2023, almost all UAW locals are still run by the same crowd of management-friendly types who came up in the union’s bureaucracy before. They make it harder to fight the companies and their way of operating encourages members’ cynicism about the union and the possibility of change. UMA is digging in for the long fight for change throughout the union.

FROM THE SHOP FLOOR

When I went to their Friday night social, I wasn’t thinking of an article. I didn’t ask if I could use anyone’s names, so I won’t. I met a retired case worker for the state of Michigan, a member of UAW Local 6000; we talked about the problem that a Local 6000 member with a similar job had just brought to DSA’s labor working group (threats of violence from clients).

I met a Ford worker from Kentucky who said he works with DSAers all the time, including on a May Day festival coming up, co-sponsored by DSA, his local, and the AFL-CIO.

I sat by a Ford worker from Chicago who told how she and her co-workers leafleted all shifts, all four entrances, in their fights with management. I talked with another Ford worker who’s running for state senate in Indiana.

I met a Detroit Stellantis semi driver with just four years’ seniority who’s running for UAW Convention delegate. I congratulated a Jeep worker who just got elected delegate, on his third election try. He’s a leader of an informal group there who ran against the “good old boys” who head the local.

At one point UMA Chair Scott Houldieson said to the crowd, ““If we’re not building our union to fight the boss, what are we building our union for?”

It was encouraging that when I introduced myself, “Jane Slaughter, I’m with Labor Notes,” everyone knew and liked Labor Notes. Some mentioned our book, Secrets of a Successful Organizer. Some are going to the national Labor Notes Conference June 12–14 in Chicago. (The DSA labor working group held a fundraiser on May Day to send Detroit-area lower-wage workers who are unionizing.) It’s all part of the “troublemaking wing” of the labor movement.

In DSA, we can disagree about a lot of things. I think we’re pretty united on working with these types of worker-leaders who really exemplify the future of socialism in this country. We’re not going to get there without them. We need DSA to be their allies and eventually their own.

[Jane Slaughter is on the board of Labor Notes, where she covered the UAW for decades. She works on Detroit DSA’s newspaper committee.]

Rank-and-File Reform Alive and Well in the UAW was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Kind words from chapter foes, Piker rallies with endorsees, and more in the April edition of Chapter and Verse.

The post More Than 170 Chapters Take May Day Action appeared first on Democratic Left.

[[{“value”:”

By: Travis Wayne

SOMERVILLE – Somerville and its new mayor face a test from organized labor as the city’s executive sits across from a burgeoning municipal workers’ union: Somerville Workers United (SWU) – AFSCME 93, whose members are joining a union representing 45,000 state, county, and municipal workers across New England.

The new city workers’ union, which seeks to represent around 220 non-union workers in the city including both the bulk of the city’s administrative staff and positions of lowest compensation, hovers near the 50% threshold of cards needed to formally request voluntary recognition from the mayor. 

The union crosses the threshold after taking the unusual organizing decision to announce their intent to unionize to the public before reaching a 50% majority — which led only to more support, both externally and internally. Compensation and rising austerity in the city government were common themes in conversations between city workers and Working Mass. 

Rising Anxiety and Opaque Compensation 

Multiple non-union employees that Working Mass spoke with shared that feelings of destabilization in their jobs began in late 2024, but were exacerbated in 2025. Non-unionized city workers have felt increasingly unstable as Greater Boston continues to lose tens of thousands of jobs – a trend that has only worsened. 

ICE’s early descent on Somerville did not help in making workers feel safe. 

As workers’ vulnerability increased, the need to protect their employment collectively did, too. Individuals’ requests and questions regarding stability and compensation were often punted under former Mayor Ballantyne’s administration. Workers were asked to wait for a Compensation Plan to be released in 2025, the summer before the city elections. But upon its release, the Plan did little except unlock deep dissatisfaction in much of the non-union workforce. According to Josh, one city worker and SWU organizer: 

While the base rate was increased for the the lowest-paid employees, the top line pay for directors also increased – and the way they paid for this was a giant step and grade system in the middle for the vast majority of non-union employees.

The sheer complexity of the Plan makes its meaning entirely opaque to many employees looking for critical information on their own employment terms. Many employees have no idea what step and grade to expect at any given time. In effect, the policies are obscured by a wall of legalese that increase barriers to entry for workers just trying to put food on their tables.

Luis, a strategic planner with the city, also added that the Compensation Plan didn’t include any mention of gender parity or Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) increases – even as gas soars and rent rises. Layoffs also remained firmly on the table. 

There was another layer, too, which fundamentally impacted the nature of the labor done in the workplace. Non-union city workers had seen their job descriptions slowly divorced from requested responsibilities and compensation. “All non-union employees were doing other duties, one-off pet projects of the mayor or whoever the city manager was at the time,” said Josh. Directors can press rank-and-file workers for assignments entirely outside their job realm and hold them accountable for that work and workers shared between departments. As Luis indicated:

It’s very difficult to figure out what to do when no one can come to agreement on what my job actually is… and we do what they need us to do at any given time.

New Austerity Suffocates City Workers Further

Mayor Jake Wilson has stated values that are aligned with many of the same priorities as Somerville workers. He supports the development of social housing and calls for the city to be a “guinea pig” in the fight against displacement. And when Mayor Wilson reported in the Cambridge Day that administrative restructuring has occupied much of his effort since taking office, he said “we’re building a team” as his biggest accomplishment of his first one hundred days in office. 

Many workers have been made to feel they are decidedly not inside that team.

First, city workers already anxious about their employment since 2025 heard silence from the mayor. According to multiple sources, Mayor Wilson did not contact or introduce himself in any way to the workforce, not even an email. “To this day, we haven’t been properly introduced to the Cabinet of the new Mayor’s Office,” said Luis, shaking his head. Other workers that spoke to Working Mass confirmed that they also had not seen the mayor once.

Then, the mayor fired Arts Council Director Greg Jenkins. The same “departmental reorganization” that created the Cabinet never introduced to workers was enough to end someone’s career after 25 years. In that case, multiple sources speculated to Working Mass that the mayor showed up in-person to introduce himself to workers (one of the only times reported) to assuage their anxieties after their direct manager’s abrupt firing.

But larger concerns than just the remoteness of the mayor were top of workers’ minds: namely, cuts. One SWU organizer shared with Working Mass that every department is expected by the administration to cut a position from their department, as of the end of April 2026. This is after they fired a staff person working in housing, an “active and essential organizer,” in late April 2026. Workers expressed the broader feeling the cuts underscored: that their labor was not valued, with dire consequences to residents. Josh said:

 The nature of our job is policy implementing for the public good. It’s a real problem we have no voice in crafting the policies we are charged with implementing.

For example, the city’s portfolio of complex permits is overseen by just three staff members charged with the enforcement of all zone ordinances and inspection in Somerville. In just one department, then, an austerity pattern towards staff from the Mayor’s Office can decrease access to direly-need services for tenants and protection from abusive landlords. Luis summarized the effect of the cuts on the already-squeezed staff:

You start to think of yourself as a number. The perception of how the administration treats us is just as a number in this work: a producer of outputs. People are still passionate about the work.

In lieu of investing in the workers who actually hold relationships with residents and can serve their needs most effectively, the Wilson administration has been characterized so far by what two workers called “a tech bro approach.”

In the Cambridge Day, the mayor underscored a “performance measurement tool” that turns many of the key calculations workers make in policy implementation into an automated dashboard for metric tracking. The mayor is also forcing workers back to work in person, following the same pattern as corporations after the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, the labor movement in Somerville beyond City Hall also signaled dissent to the austerity of the new administration impacting non-union city workers. According to the Somerville Educators’ Union (SEU), the mayor aims to take funds from Somerville schools: 

Mayor Jake Wilson has asked the district to prepare for up to $1 million in reduced funding, which is well below level-service. This is to account for the projected $5.3 million deficit in the City’s budget.

The mayor has asked for these cuts despite, as the teachers’ union pointed out, the fact that the City of Somerville holds 23.8 million in “Free Cash” and $15 million in a Stabilization Fund. Those funds not only can be utilized to float education, but also support city workers.

Organizing the Union of the Formerly Non-Union

Within the city government, around 220 non-union employees make up the workforce that SWU seeks recognition to represent. The organizing drive took off across multiple non-union departments after the Compensation Plan’s release, but especially revved up as workers felt the need to ensure their own jobs’ stability as the city administration changed. 

The Office of Sustainability and Environment was among the first centers of agitation. According to SWU organizers, department workers’ direct feedback was met with coldness by their director, leading to further dissatisfaction exacerbated by micromanagement that followed. Any projects that needed directorial approval were stonewalled and access limited. 

The Office of Sustainability workers were the first to sign union cards, with three members of the original Organizing Committee (OC) from that department, because of both that stonewalling and another key factor: the employees’ own deep experiences. Workers in the office included a federal employee purged from the Environmental Protection Agency and a former member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), equipped with union experience, while another employee was a community organizer hired to work in community development for the city due to their organizing background.

Other departments proved more challenging to reach and build solidarity with, because they were more remote, more autonomous, and better-managed by their director than others. 

Non-union workers share a workplace – tasks, relations, ideas – with unionized colleagues. Thus, even in departments without workers with labor or organizing experience, workers had exposure to the major differences between their contracts and those of union workers. The Somerville Municipal Employees Union (SMEU) was unaffected by the Compensation Plan and, when union employees saw benefits won, non-union workers also observed increases due to the city’s requirement for parity. The difference became stark.

City workers first sought to organize into one of the city government’s existing unions that inspired so many of their ranks. Ultimately, that choice seemed less possible over time for workers’ needs, according to Josh. Despite SMEU President Ed Halloran’s support, the reception of SMEU membership to their coworkers’ unionization was frostier than they hoped. Controversy between other parts of the Somerville labor movement and SMEU around the reinstatement of one union member that led to the 2024 resignation of library workers was also not encouraging.

We started having these amorphous conversations… those of us who were former municipal workers began reaching out to SMEU, the Steelworkers, UAW, and eventually AFSCME 93… their expertise with the public union process was on display in a way the others in a technical space weren’t… and many felt SMEU would not yield in their challenges, and the time it would take to activate leadership would be too long for workers.

In the end, 75% of the nascent union chose to affiliate with AFSCME 93. 

Going Public 

Somerville Workers United (SWU)’s demands are, in the end, simple.

“We need a seat at the table,” Josh told Working Mass. “We need clear policies and procedures in the handbook, like overtime, flexibility, offboarding, steps and grades made transparent, position reclassification.”

The union chose to go public on March 10, before reaching the 50% threshold, largely because one obstacle they encountered was hesitancy from their coworkers to join in any clandestine effort. In a city where so many unions bargain with the city, some non-union city workers felt uncomfortable organizing with Somerville Workers United till the union was open about its work. 

According to SWU organizers, the strategy of going public early was successful. Going public allowed the union to speak to more and more of their non-union coworkers openly. Questions of dignity, compensation, and stability unfolded in conversations from City Hall to the most remote corner, with organizers conducting one-on-ones department by department. 

The mayor’s office did not interfere or in any way communicate its notice of the new union. On April 10, 2026, SWU had reached 70 union cards signed out of around 220. The union held a series of socials for workers and their allies in labor and beyond: a St. Patrick’s Day social at the Burren, building-level tabling at the Annex and City Hall, a potluck picnic in Winter Hill, an art build at Aeronaut Brewery. Workers signing on steadily grew, till by the end of the month, the union hovered near the 50% threshold needed for climactic action. 

On May Day, as workers rallied in socials and events across Greater Boston, SWU coordinated with the Somerville Educators Union on their rally to “demonstrate solidarity across public sector workers in the face of looming budget cuts” in their final stretch push for recognition from the city government. The action signals an important shift from seeking recognition as a union to acting as one, as part of and connected to the fight for recognition – in this case, representing workers’ interests in unity with Somerville’s teachers’ union facing the city to reject the notion of a zero-sum game between schools and services.

“To some extent, to be the union is the point,” Josh said. SWU has certainly become the union. It’s up to the mayor whether he will recognize the workers as the union they already have become, or not. 

Travis Wayne is a union organizer in Somerville and the managing editor of Working Mass.

The post Somerville City Workers, Facing Opaque Pay and Austerity, Unionize with AFSCME 93 appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]] 

The post Coulee DSA ENDORSES Emily Berge for Congress! first appeared on Coulee DSA.