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By Chris Brady

NEW BEDFORD – Visiting this city on Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts’s South Coast region, you might not expect that it was not just once, but twice the richest city per capita in North America — first from whaling, and then from textile production. The old whaling boats are remembered only by the city’s museum to that industry, although in its place now floats a vibrant fishing fleet. And although the many old textile mills still dominate the city scape, many have long ago been turned into condos, vintage shops, or trendy bakeries.

Settled in 1652 by the Plymouth Colony on historic Wampanoag lands, the region first gained prominence as an industrial hub from its near-total dominance of the whaling trade, with New Bedford whale oil illuminating lanterns across the globe. This prosperity earned the city the title of “the richest city in the world” and immortalized it as the setting of Herman Melville’s anti-capitalist monologue Moby Dick. However, as new methods of exploiting our natural world developed, petroleum made oil lanterns obsolete, and the whaling industry was left emaciated. Faced with a growing population of unemployed workers and new immigrants, the city’s ownership class recognized the need for a new direction. The textile industry became the obvious choice.

Not only New Bedford but the entire New England region is deeply intertwined with the textile industry, from Holyoke to Lowell and Lawrence, dominating our economic landscape from the early 1800s to the Great Depression. Yet, New Bedford stood apart, thanks to its unique combination of a huge population of cheap immigrant labor, the new steam engine, and convenient logistical location between its port and the financial centers Boston and New York. This convergence propelled New Bedford to become the largest mill town in the country, becoming the richest city in the world for a second time. The contradictions in this title was not lost on the working class, many of whom earned below-sustenance wages, while shareholders earned exorbitant dividend payouts. Alongside this industrial growth came a prodigious history of working-class struggle, epitomized by the 1928 textile strike—a six-month standoff that brought the city’s mills to a grinding halt. Although ultimately not successful, the 1928 strike provides valuable insights for organizers to learn from for current day application.

The Textile Mills

By 1928, textiles was the largest primary industry in the country, employing 1.1 million Americans and accounting for 13% of all manufacturing employment. Massachusetts was the single largest textile state with some 32 percent of all MA workers employed in the industry.

The American South remained a powerhouse for cotton production, and manufacturing the raw material into textiles domestically was cheaper than sending raw cotton overseas. Out of this paradigm geographic competition emerged between the Southern and New England mills. Both were predicated on cheap labor, the South exploiting the descendants of African slaves, and New England relying on the steady stream of unskilled and mostly European immigrants. The Southern mills were unmatched at producing coarse-cotton products, and the New England mills who tried to meet their production were forced to close, as the Southern industries paid around $12 a week for workers compared to Massachusetts’ $19. The reason behind the wage discrepancy is multi-faceted, but was likely a confluence of racism, less employment opportunities for Southern workers, and a significantly more antagonistic union sentiment than the Northern states had.

However, New Bedford, and much of New England’s mills reacted by producing fine-cotton products instead. For a long time this insulated New Bedford from Southern competition, and allowed it to be a major global hub for the industry. But by 1928 production was increasingly moving to the south.

The conditions were predictably horrible. Workers made on average about $1000 per year, when a subsistence wage in the 1920s was around $1400. Unsurprisingly, women made even less money, and children were regularly employed in the mills. The work was dangerous, and worker safety protections were basically non-existent. The work week was Monday to Saturday and from 60 to 80 hours per week. The mill owners constructed cramped, decrepit worker housing, and it was not atypical for three people to sleep in the same bed.

By 1928, mill workers had long played an important role in labor militancy. Mill workers in Lawrence Massachusetts shocked the nation with their successful ‘Bread and Roses’ strike in 1912. By 1926, the budding American Communist movement was intimately involved with organizing mill workers – successfully organizing the 15,000 strong Passaic New Jersey mill strike.

Launching The Strike

In April of 1928, in response to a sputtering economy and competition with the Southern mills, New Bedford mill owners to push through a 10 percent wage cut. Workers did not take this lying down. On April 16th, 1928 the workers in the mills voted to strike against the wage cut.

The New Bedford strike was a conflict between the old craft unions and the new industrial labor movement. Around 5,000 of the affected 30,000 workers were unionized, primarily for English speaking, non-immigrant skilled laborers, under the independent American Federation of Textile Operative (AFTO) and other craft unions. The AFTO leaders were well connected in New Bedford elite society, for example, the President was also the local police chief. As leaders of the local labor aristocracy, as AFTO leaders were connected to the ownership, government institutions, and social clubs – and the rank and file being composed of the skilled, better-compensated American born workers, translated to the AFTO being a reactionary organization. Still, the employers’ pay-cut was so provocative that it initially united both the skilled, native-born workers of the AFTO, and the larger numbers of semi-skilled, foreign born mill workers.

Enter The Communists

The brewing strike news made its way to American Communist organizers, who arrived prior to the strike vote. Albert Weisbord was integral in organizing the Passaic strike, Fred Beal had been a fifteen years old worker-activist during Lawrence’s Bread and Roses strike, and both of them headed to New Bedford to assist the striking workers. Describing the challenges ahead, Weisbord noted that the multi-ethnic coalition and language barriers would be difficult to organize around, as well as the crushing poverty the workers faced making sacrificing wages untenable, as well as, arguably primarily, the duplicitous craft union which neglected the needs of the unskilled workers being obstacles to liberation.

Weisboard, Beal, and other Communists distributed flyers to the unskilled immigrant workers at the mills, which contributed to the successful AFTO strike vote. They organized a group outside of the craft unions, called the Textile Mill Committee (TMC), which represented the left-wing of the mill workers. They targeted the unskilled immigrant workers. Namely, due to the AFTO not wanting to organize the unskilled workers, and because the TMC called for more radical demands: Abolishing the wage cut and increasing pay 20%, equal pay for women, a 40 hour work week, and more worker protections – for everyone, not just AFTO membership – they were more popular with the immigrant workers than was the AFTO.

The reaction to the newly organized left wing worker movement was not well received by AFTO leadership. They called the TMC ‘communists’, and claimed that the inter-union ideological struggle would negate any potential for worker gains. In reality, the real obstacle to the strike was the AFTO, who spent most of their resources publicly defaming the TMC, and trying to keep the non-unionized unskilled workers off of their picket line.

Tactics The TMC was incredibly innovative in maintaining the longevity of the strike, which lasted for six months. They picketted every workday, and leaned on the unskilled workers to join their lines. They created fliers, held demonstrations, sang songs, held mass meetings, and generally increased consciousness and militancy of the workers. Perhaps most notably, the Communists, in tandem with Workers International Relief, utilized almost all of their strike funds to help offset the poverty incurred by workers sacrificing their wages, creating soup kitchens and funding day-to-day necessities for the workers and their families. Some of the children were temporarily relocated to sympathetic families in New York City to ensure they were cared for.

Fred Beal, who had become one of the faces of the New Bedford strike, even tactically let himself get arrested to provide a moment for workers to rally around. The workers surrounded the police car he was in and tried to tip it over, although the cops eventually were able to bring him to jail for one month. Strikers routinely surrounded the prison. When released, he went back to the picket line.

The proof was in the organizing. The TMC was the lifeblood of the movement.

Capital Reacts

At the start of the strike, the poor conditions of the workers were so obvious, that even the bourgeois press responded with some sympathy, endorsing the AFTO demand to reverse the wage cut. Church leaders turned down bribes from mill owners to preach against the strike and instead sympathized with the workers. Social groups like the Rotary Club, American Legion, and Chamber of Commerce similarly expressed supportive sentiment.

However, as the red scare had been fermenting in the popular American psyche, and as the strike grew longer and more wearisome, popular sentiment shifted. AFTO leaders formally joined the American Federation of Labor Union’s subsidiary, the United Textile Workers, in order to try and wrest control away from the communist TMC faction. With the AFL on board, the Socialist Party sent in representatives from Boston and New York City to change the narrative. Indeed, the Socialist Party of the day seems to have been more concerned with consolidating power in labor institutions than with the plight of working people. Self-proclaimed socialists penned hit pieces in the local press, condemning the TMC as divisive, harmful to the workers’ cause, and claiming that organizing the unskilled workers was fruitless and counter productive. The Passiac strike was revised to be fractious, and not worth emulating in New Bedford. Socialism and the establishment union apparatus were weaponized to kneecap the true popular workers movement, to the benefit of the mill owners.

As the weeks passed, the police got more combative, targeting strike leaders with fabricated charges. Strikers grew increasingly destitute without wages. Mayor Ashley called for the national guard to support the overwhelmed police force, culminating in 256 arrests in a massive brawl with strikers on July 30th. A Department of Labor official was sent to New Bedford to help mediate, as the mills were hemorrhaging money, and demanded state intervention. The previously friendly civil society groups, the local churches, Rotary Club, and newspapers were predictably amicable no longer, and blasted the AFTO line: The TMC and the Communists are the problem!

These variables coalesced into an unrepresentative agreement between the AFTO’s skilled workers and mill owners – compromising on a 5% wage cut. Unskilled workers were not included in the mediation, nor included in the union’s one concession. Only 2,000 workers voted in the following referendum on continuing the strike after this agreement, and within this voting minority, ending the strike won out by a slim majority.

The TMC, understandably, did not accept this – and attempted to rally the workers to reject the agreement and keep striking. However, in part due to the tenuous economic conditions of the time, on October 8th, most of the strikers showed up to work, effectively ending one of the largest industrial labor actions in the history of the Commonwealth.

Lessons of the Strike

The Mills of New Bedford and the rest of the Commonwealth have since left, picking up and abandoning their workers to relocate to cheaper southern states with the advent of the Great Depression, an early premonition for the incoming neoliberal havoc of globalization. The Passaic, New Jersey mill ended up closing in 1929, in part due to owner retaliation for the workers supporting the New Bedford strikers. Beal, Weisbord, Murdoch and other American Communist organizers left town, but they were not discouraged. They understood that New Bedford was a small setback within the broader history of human class struggle. They did, however, glean some important lessons for labor organizers in the future. 

The TMC built considerable power within the working masses. They were able to achieve legitimacy, despite being led by out of state Communists, which was an ideology even the unskilled immigrant workers were not necessarily aligned with, by being more effective than the corporate-minded AFTO. The textile committee was simply more effective. They activated the unorganized, provided direction to the movement, and took better care of the striking workers with their soup kitchens and resource allocation. They were militant and uncompromising.

Additionally, the TMC was particularly focused on immigrant workers. The strategy is clear. Immigrants and unskilled workers were the clear majority of the affected strikers, yet the AFTO had left them destitute for years, preferring to solely uplift their own in a selfish and nativist play. As socialists, we know that artificial divisions among the working class only benefit the boss. Craft and company unions are antithetical to our work. Even better, the textile committee would have benefitted from elevating the immigrant workers they represented into more prominent leadership roles. The authenticity is a critical variable – and allowed the press to vilify the whole movement as the work of a few nefarious out of state ideologues.

The strike came at a key inflection point for the American communist movement, at the height of a debate on whether and to what degree to launch new unions like the TMC, or to continue pressing unions like the AFTO to organize the unorganized despite their establishment, nativist, craft, and anti-communist inclinations. Although the TMC failed in New Bedford to win the unionization of the 23,000 or so semi-skilled workers excluded from the AFTO, the general approach would later make strong inroads in the great drives of the Congress of Industrial Unions.

The current landscape of American labor is similarly scourged with compradors and class traitors. Too many modern unions are shades of AFTO, fixated on their status as an institution, leaders getting invited to dinners, and the incestuous marriage between labor and bourgeois political swindlers. Reflecting on the debates of the Communist movement of old is worthwhile when considering how to proceed.

The New Bedford strike lasted twenty-three weeks, involved over 26,000 workers, and resulted in $600,000 in lost wages and millions of lost mill profits. New Bedford has been unceremoniously written-off as a ‘gateway city’ in conjunction with the other working class cities in the Commonwealth. Local organizations have been quick to cast-off the former mill town reputation.

But Beacon Hill nomenclature cannot rewrite the incredible history which happened on the South Coast, or the broader industrial history of the Commonwealth and its mills. The next time the working class of our cities organize, and when we are in the same streets in between the recently renovated mill buildings the old strikers used to walk, we will be ready.

Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA.

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

BUGWU members rally for a contract – Working Mass 2024.

By Freddy Reiber

Boston University has a long history with labor organizing.

In 1979, as a reaction to the policies of famously conservative university president, John Silber, professors, clerical workers, librarians, and other workers struck. After 18 days on strike, the faculty were able to win a 32.5 percent increase in pay and union recognition for clerical workers and librarians. Unfortunately, a Supreme Court decision later ruled that private university faculty were not covered by the Nation Labor Relations Act.

When my union, the Boston University Graduate Workers Union, went on strike demanding higher wages, comprehensive health care, and childcare funding we tried to channel that same history, carrying signs painted with “UNFINISHED BUSINESS 1979 -2024”.

Graduate Workers are oftentimes the backbone of universities, with them providing more and more of the labor for the university. This labor includes conducting a large amount of the research and handling most of the instruction given to students, with much of the duties that are performed by current graduate students previously assigned to full-time faculty. At the same time, many universities have not adjusted wages while students and workers have faced significant increases in rent. A 2020 study found that 17% of graduate students experienced homelessness and 49 percent of graduated students dealt with some level of housing insecurity.

When we decided to unionize, our central demand was that the university provide us with a living wage, one free from the significant rent burden placed on us as Boston workers. Specifically, our focus was on COLA – a stipulation in our contract that ties our wage increases to cost of living calculators. Our other asks included improvements to our health care along with an actual dental or vision plan, meaningful child care stipends, and support for those with disabilities. Negotiations over our first contract stalled, and after a number of months of getting nowhere in bargaining, we voted to strike.

Organizing in a University

Organizing within a large research university is a challenge. As an organizer, you are trained to leverage social networks. Find a community and a problem, agitate over said problem, and use it to build worker power. For Boston University, the common network was the academic department. As it became clearer that a strike was needed, leaders in each department worked together to form organizing plans, hold meetings, and do power mapping around the critical workers we needed to reach. These same leaders would also communicate amongst each other, sharing data and ideas as well as planning on university wide actions and organizing goals.

One of the strengths of this leadership model is that department leaders tend to have a deep understanding of the conditions within their network. As a worker in the computer and data science departments, my rapport with my fellow workers allowed me to organize and mobilize quickly in response to calls for a strike. These included quickly developing a mutual aid network to help soften the loss pay, as well as reaching out to significantly more remote workers who had little understanding of union action. It also allowed for each department to take ownership of the strike in a highly democratic way, with workers figuring out how to respond to union-busting actions by the university as a group.

A great example of this was the Math department, which in response to having courses originally struck scabbed by university administrators, were able to organize and plan direct actions led by the workers. These actions were in turn met with union busting from university management, but due to the strong worker-to-worker organizing, the department was able to maintain its militancy and continue to hurt Boston University’s bottom line.

The issue with this somewhat disconnected network, however, is that departments that lacked a leader would often go “dark”. Unable to penetrate these almost hidden departments, many of them likely didn’t receive proper communication around how to participate or were even aware that there was a union action. This was something that my own department (a group of about 200) also suffered from.

Despite our best attempts to reach out, many workers had little interest or knowledge around union activity. Many of these workers worked remote or were masters students giving them little presence on campus. Even the university itself seemed unable to know who these workers were as the provided list of recognized workers contained numerous errors, including having a number of my co-workers as stationed in the business school.

This isn’t that uncommon for university worker and student strikes, especially when you lack a first contract and guaranteed rights for orientation. But even in places with a union orientation, the high turn-around among workers in large classes make it almost impossible to conduct meaningful organizing.

Our answer to this question was to simply force the issue and call for a strike, an answer I still stand by. Nothing was more productive in terms of getting workers involved than calling for a strike, and I suspect that any attempts to organize these workers outside of simply calling for direct action would not have actually worked, as they would have been replaced within a few months.

Our other answer to these disconnected communication networks was to use Slack, a 1500+ worker digital communication channel that quickly became the focal point for many controversial discussions around larger union actions. So often workers who hadn’t been a part of any union actions or had any background in the union would join Slack as a means of airing grievances over union discussions. More arguments occurred over Slack than I think anyone would care to admit, and none of which were productive to our organizing. Unlike traditional shop-floor organizing, important discussions happened digitally, with workers unable to properly understand each other, leading to divisions instead of solidarity. What was supposed to be a tool to help communication became a burden, with so many of my fellow organizers deleting the application as soon as possible.

In It For The Long-haul

The other main learning point for us as organizers was the long haul strategy. Adopted from strikes at other universities like University of California and University of Michigan, our strike was defined by the “long haul”. Instead of setting a specific deadline, our strike’s end is decided by the workers within the bargaining unit, with votes being held, in our case, every week. As grad workers, we see our economic and structural power as something that builds over time. Unlike strikes in manufacturing or in K-12 education, graduate workers’ work isn’t felt day to day. Instead, it is felt by the numerous grades not being submitted, the missed lectures and discussions, and the lack of feedback on work that is critical to higher education.

During the first semester of our strike, the long haul was, without a doubt, effective. The distributed and somewhat messy network of BUGWU leaders were able to channel the frustrations of our worker population into pretty wide and effective mass action. Numerous courses had to either be canceled or have substantial changes in structure. In my own turf, we ended up being able to get a significant amount of workers to go on strike, with many classes in the department not having grades, discussion sections, or even lectures for most of the remaining semester.

We also hosted a significant number of rallies, pickets, and marches all of which had great turn out. Some of these included our initial strike rally, in which congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Elizabeth Warren showed up to speak and show solidarity, as well as our May Day rally which had participants in the thousands.

BUWGU members and community supporters march through campus – Working Mass 2024.

This isn’t to say that the early strike wasn’t still a challenge. Other than our internal problems highlighted above, we also faced numerous external challenges as the university attempted to strike bust. One example of this was the bringing of academic charges against those striking not a

Oftentimes graduate students are the primary people responsible for the production of course materials, with much of this work being stored on digital repositories. To limit the potential for scab work, striking workers would often take said materials down, removing access to them. This ended up being a rather controversial tactic with the university, with many administrators falsely claiming that we had destroyed student exams and assignments. They would then use these strike actions as the basis for academic discipline that was targeted at our student status, not our worker status.

Other examples included aggressive removal of union flyers and literature, with one dean going so far as to verbally harass and chase flyering workers around a building. Still, despite these challenges, the spring semester strike was a success. No vote to end the strike was anywhere close to being contentious, and we won serious improvements in a number of critical areas.

As spring died down, and we started to plan for summer, a season in which many graduate workers are not employed by the university, we decided to treat summer like a resting period. The plan was for most of us to take time away from the fight, and then ramp back up to the large full strike when school started again in the fall.

For a few departments, like math or computer science, there was no such break. Many of the math department workers still had teaching positions over the summer, with most of them continuing to strike. To ensure that no one was left behind, I, along with other organizers in computer science and math, expanded our mutual aid network to help cover the cost to workers, many of which had not received a paycheck in over 3 months. By leveraging graduate workers’ other employment positions, we were able to ensure that workers could continue to strike, resulting in the cancellation of a number of classes.

Many of my fellow organizers have congratulated me on this work, as we really were the center of the summer strike. However, upon reflection I think it was a mistake. The limited summer strike heavily drained most of our resources and as summer moved into fall, many of us were at our financial limits. At the same time, the limited summer strike had limited impact. Although numerous classes needed to be changed, the limited number of positions we had to strike ensured the university was able to limit our damage.

For departments that didn’t have work in the summer, many of them tried but failed to recapture the same militancy that they had shown during the spring, in part due to the spatial and temporal issues discussed above, as well as just general burn out.

At the same time, the university offered us a full contract which gave significant raises in both compensation and benefits to certain groups of workers like parents or humanities, while also leaving other workers high and dry.

All of these factors compounded into a significantly weaker fall strike. Numerous departments who felt like the strike had gone on for long enough organized around ending the strike, while other workers who were still dedicated to the fight had to return to work for financial or personal reasons. Still, we pressed on, and were able to get the university to make some small, but significant moves at the table, like cheaper health care for dependents.

Discussions then turned to securing back to work protections for workers on strike, which while contentious, ensured that no worker was left without a job, which once settled, led to a pretty quick ratification. The seventh month strike was over and we had secured our first contract.

Is It Over?

When I first set out to write the article, the main question that was posed to me was, “Do you think the strike was a success?”, a question that is probably unanswerable for me, due to my close ties with the strike.

There were a number of wins, especially for our lowest paid workers, and in other in areas like child care. This contract allows for people who were originally going to need to leave the university to stay. At the same time, there were also so many things that were left on the table, like better access rights for those with disabilities or an actual dental plan.

Instead of answering this question, I have tried to highlight and share, what I think are, learning moments for other workers attempting to secure a first contract of their own. There are numerous decisions we made, like our use of digital technology to try and bridge communication gaps, our lack of a centralized leadership structure, and our use of the long-haul strike that I hope other unions can learn from.

To close, I want to briefly remind us that no single contract will ever be enough.

There will always be more left on the table, more to win, and battles over contract enforcement. As an organizer, the fight doesn’t start or end during a strike, instead it’s something that we must live for everyday. And when it comes to the Boston University Graduate Workers Union and its fight for social and economic justice, we still have unfinished business.

Freddy Reiber is a member of BUGWU and Boston DSA.

Photo Credits – Henry De Groot

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“The Last Showgirl” depicts exploitative environments in Vegas, but real Vegas dancers and hospitality workers are fighting back with a union on their side.

The post “The Last Showgirl” and Labor on the Las Vegas Strip appeared first on EWOC.

Find sample language for your union contract to defend immigrant workers at your workplace.

The post Want to Defend Immigrant Workers in Your Contract? Here Are Some Suggestions. appeared first on EWOC.

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By Chris Brady

Federal workers are used to being vilified. It’s a convenient punching down opportunity for politicians and pundits; our government doesn’t work, and the mascot of this inefficiency is the faceless bureaucrat, paid by the taxpayers’ dime. Politicizing federal workers has been a strategy since the Carter administration. Federal workers live and work across the country, including 25,488 in Massachusetts, making the United States government the Commonwealth’s 4th biggest employer.

There is, naturally, some truth to narratives of inefficiency – our government has been stripped for parts and sold to private companies over decades, which is not conducive to administering social welfare, maintaining public infrastructure, or reining in those very private interests through common-sense regulation.

Federal employees are critically important in maintaining a functional country: responsible for funding school disability programs, ensuring clean water standards, enforcing antitrust and labor regulation, and much more. Public servants, unlike the private sector, are at least somewhat accountable to the public because their jobs and duties come from Congress – which is more conducive to the democratic society that socialists are striving for. 

The new Trump administration has made it clear that they intend to take up the mantle of attacking the public sector. It is important to identify motivations behind this discourse, and how federal employees are reacting, and to connect federal worker issues and the broader class struggle to inform organizers as we prepare for a likely crackdown on labor in the incoming administration. 

Sharks Circle the Bureaucrats 

Elon Musk shared this AI generated image after announcing DOGE on X, the everything app.

Elon Musk has been rewarded for his 250 million dollar investment in President Trump’s re-election with a pseudo-appointment to head the new Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), named in reference to the meme dog. Vivek Ramaswamy was also tasked with co-chair of the department, although his current role is unclear after announcing a campaign for governor of Ohio. DOGE is not an official government agency and only exists in an advisory capacity.

That has not stopped Musk from identifying a litany of agencies, regulations, and staffing changes he hopes to pursue, such as considering cutting entire agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Education, and even the Federal Reserve. Additional reports indicate that “DEI programs” are also in DOGE’s crosshairs. Notably, Musk has not publicly addressed what is widely understood to be the area of greatest government excess and bloat, the military and subsequent vampiric defense contractors which guide U.S. foreign policy. It is unclear if Musk’s role as CEO of government defense contractor SpaceX has influenced this omission.

Trump re-appointed Russel Vought to head the influential Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for budget development and execution of government agencies, among other things. Vought was one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation’s notorious “Project 2025”, which includes many stipulations about reforming federal work. One of the most controversial components of the plan includes categorizing swaths of federal workers, likely tens of thousands or more, as ‘Schedule F’ employees. This change would reclassify many federal career postings as political appointments, and potentially allow room for political fealty tests to the current administration as a condition of employment.

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), chair of the Senate DOGE caucus, has introduced multiple bills targeting federal workers. The ‘Drain the Swamp Act’ would relocate 30% of certain federal staff outside of the D.C. area, forcing thousands of workers to move without compensation, and another would fiercely restrict federal telework policy. Senator Ernst cited an inaccurate study to support the measure. The Senate Ways and Means Committee is considering a proposal to increase the federal pension deduction for some workers from .8% to 4.4% per paycheck. 

Federal workforces’ right to collective bargaining is also on the chopping block. According to reporting from the Washington Post, incoming ranking Trump staffer Stephen Miller’s office was reported to be presenting a barrage of anti-federal workforce executive orders to congressional leadership. One such order involves enabling the President to prevent federal workers from collective bargaining, citing national security concerns, and removing a central worker protection which upends decades of precedent. 56% of the federal workforce is protected by collective bargaining contracts, and federal workers have some of the highest rates of union participation in the country. 

Although this There is no debate – this is a declaration of war on the public sector, civil service, and labor writ large.

Air Traffic Controllers and Historic Precedent

Trump is not the first administration to target federal workers for political purposes. Infamously, Reagan’s busting of the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) illegal strike, culminating in the termination of 11,325 workers who had refused the President’s back to work order, has dealt a lasting blow to the American labor movement. The strike bust came despite PATCO’s endorsement of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. The defeat marked the beginning of a decline in union participation which has continued until this day, and the beginning of a change in public perception to view unions and government workers much more negatively.

Professor Joseph McCartin outlines how federal workers broadly missed an opportunity to show solidarity with the air traffic controllers in his leading history of the strike, Collision Course. The firing of 11,325 workers could have incited action from workers everywhere. Instead, federal employees watched as the Reagan administration pulverized their colleagues – granted, PATCO never reached out for help – exposing a significant omission of solidarity among federal workers that was leveraged against them. McCartin states, “The PATCO’s ghost still has the capacity to instill fear”, which materialized with private sector bosses emulating Reagan-style strike busting with new vigor. Additionally, PATCO lost the PR battle, and never articulated to the American people why we should be invested in their fair treatment. Lessons from 1981 remain prescient as federal workers navigate the coming months.

The AFA-CWA flight attendants union provides a hopeful counterweight, when in 2017, they threatened to go on strike in protest of the 35-day ongoing government shutdown. What is notable about this action was not just that it was tremendously effective, with the President greenlighting a temporary spending bill the next day and re-opening the government, but that flight attendants are private sector employees. They identified intersections between their employment and the shutdown despite not being personally affected, while also advocating for their own interests, given that the unpaid air traffic controllers were a direct threat to airline safety. It is an incredible example of how workers are capable of using our power for political change, and how solidarity across sectors is absolutely essential for our movement.

How Are Federal Workers Reacting?

Federal employees are nervous, according to Harper, a federal employee at a financial regulatory agency and rank and file union member.

“I joined the federal service to serve other people, but it doesn’t feel good to be caught in the crosshairs of this. Federal employees are thinking, what’s my backup plan?”

These reforms are likely the manifestation of an ideological privatization crusade furiously advocated for by conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform, but have an added consequence of eroding established labor protections. Harper adds, “Federal workers are one of the most organized sectors in the workforce, that’s part of the agenda here.”

Ellen is a union steward and federal employee who works in public assistance benefit administration. She noted that her office’s union membership increased by 10% in the past two months, indicating that federal workers are proactively responding to a changing employment environment. “People have been encouraged to better understand their working environment, there is no longer complacency where there once might’ve been.” 

She also adds that DOGE is not omnipotent. “There is a lot of speculation right now, but they have to go through the proper legal procedures. There are 60+ years of Congressional legislation to work through, outlining our agency’s mission and responsibilities. As long as we know the rules, and hit them in the head with the rules, we have a better chance.”

Federal workers are represented by multiple unions, some affiliated with the AFL-CIO while some are independent. The unions have historically worked together during government shutdowns, when much of the civil service is furloughed or temporarily work without pay. “Inter-union solidarity is crucial. All federal workers have to listen to the 535 members of the United States Congress to do our jobs, Congress members forget that we are workers and residents in their districts and they need to listen to us to do their jobs too. We can, and must, band together as federal workers.” The exact next steps of a broader coalition of federal workers is currently unclear, but clearly organizing across federal agencies will be essential – and urgent.

Civil servants are generally cautious of political activism. The Hatch Act is a federal law which prohibits federal workers from engaging in some forms of political activity. Originally intended as a measure to combat corruption and the spoils system, it has recently been weaponized to crack down on free speech. Notably, the Office of Special Counsel accused one federal worker of violating the Hatch Act after penning an op-ed criticizing the Biden administration’s genocide in Gaza. The worker was later found to not be in violation of the law. The Hatch Act does not prevent federal workers from engaging in political activity, protesting, or organizing outside of work, but has had a chilling effect on the organizing potential of these workers due to fear of repression.

The American Federation of Governmental Employees (AFGE) just filed a lawsuit in conjunction with Public Citizen and the State Democracy Defenders Fund against D.O.G.E. to ensure the group complies with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

How Do Federal Worker Issues Affect the Class Struggle?

The federal workforce occupies a unique position within class society. Federal workers perform critical functions that improve the lives of millions of Americans: maintaining national parks, building civilian infrastructure, distributing SNAP benefits, and inspecting food and medicine, among many other essential services. On the other hand, some federal employees participate in the militarization of the border, surveillance of American citizens, and the implementation of vile foreign policy apparatus such as the genocide in Gaza. Despite these contrasts, all federal workers share the same employer, and many are represented by the same unions. This is one example of the many contradictions we must grapple with under capitalism.

Federal workers are, fundamentally, workers. True liberation will only come with a political transformation that abolishes our government’s reactionary and genocidal functions while empowering those that genuinely serve the public good. The workers most likely to suffer under upcoming DOGE reforms are not those complicit in these oppressive functions but rather those whose jobs most directly support and uplift the public.

As neoliberalism nears its end, a ruthless brand of faux-populism is rising to take its place. The oligarchs surrounding Donald Trump seem determined to continue Reagan’s privatization agenda. Their strategy is clear: deliberately undermine the effectiveness of government services, then use that dysfunction as a pretext for further privatization. Worse, drawing lessons from the 1981 PATCO defeat, they see federal workers as the ideal test subjects for implementing harsher anti-union policies, potentially setting the stage for a broader assault on labor rights across the nation.

Federal employees may sense the storm ahead, but readiness is uncertain. The actions of federal unions in the coming months will be critical—potentially leading either to a mass exodus of public-sector workers or to a groundswell of mobilization and transformative change. Existing unions would do well to draw inspiration from the militancy of the flight attendants at AFA-CWA. Educating the American public about the essential work performed by federal employees is vital. A stronger sense of class-consciousness and more vocal leadership within the federal workforce are needed to meet the challenges ahead.

Coalitions of rank-and-file federal employees must organize and strategize to protect themselves. DSA and organizations like it should actively support these efforts. The PATCO strike of 1981 was a devastating defeat, but as the forces of capital and labor prepare for another confrontation, we have a chance to rewrite history. This time, the outcome could mark a turning point—where collective action reclaims power and reshapes the future of federal labor for the better.

Federal workers are invited to share their stories with @fedsworkforyou on instagram.

Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA.

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Whether from management or co-workers, racial divisions serve the interests of the boss and weaken your collective power.

The post The Multiracial, Multilingual Campaign appeared first on EWOC.

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By Vanessa Bartlett and Aaron Hall

BTU members rally in Jamaica Plain on Thursday, January 16.

BOSTON—On Thursday morning, public school teachers across Boston participated in informational pickets at three Boston schools prior to the start of the school day. Members of the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) have been working under an expired contract since August, and these informational pickets may be a sign of BTU members’ growing agitation. 

One of the main issues that BTU members raised was the low pay for paraprofessional teachers in Boston. 

Paraprofessional educators work with students who have special needs to help them succeed in a classroom. According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, an individual needs to have an associates degree, 48 credit hours in post-secondary education, or qualification from an assessment to apply as a paraprofessional. 

Paraprofessionals (“paras,” for short) play a critical role for special needs students performing functions from helping with toileting and hygiene to adapting instructions from the teacher. Currently, paraprofessionals are paid around $30,000 annually.

Mary Thomas, a paraprofessional who works at the Curley K-8 school in Jamaica Plain, told Working Mass, “We’re fighting for living wages for paras. Paras can’t subsist here. They can’t sustain living in the city that they work in and they live in and a lot of our teachers can’t either.” 

Thomas has worked as a paraprofessional in the BTU for 12 years and said that paras like herself have had enough. “I think the last time we were given a raise, it was a dollar, on a salary that is already unsustainable in a city where you need about $70,000 as a single person to live,” said Thomas.

BTU President Eric Berg addresses picketing educators.

Paraprofessionals’ working and living conditions are going to be a central point of contention in the BTU’s fight for a new contract, according to BTU president Erik Berg. 

“Boston is unique among communities in Massachusetts and maybe around the country in requiring a single general education teacher to also be a special education teacher. We’re seeking an end to the city of Boston’s practice of…depriving students with disabilities from the necessary specialized instruction delivered from an additional teacher, which is what they really need to learn and thrive,” Berg relayed.

American Federation of Teachers – Massachusetts (AFT-MA) president Jessica Tang, who was also at the Curley school informational picket, added that they are trying to fight for a livable wage for educators, including paraprofessional teachers who “…are [the] lowest paid workers in [their] bargaining units.” Tang was formerly the president of BTU before taking the top job at AFT-MA, the AFL-CIO affiliated state-wide educators’ union which represents around 25,000 educators across 7 school districts, including Chelsea and Springfield; the larger state-wide educators’ union, Massachusetts Teachers Association, is not a member of the AFL-CIO.

AFT-MA President Jessica Tang attends informational picket.

Vanessa Bartlett is the vice-chair of the Working Mass editorial board and a member of Boston DSA.

Aaron Hall is a biotech worker and a writer for Working Mass.

Photo Credit: Vanessa Bartlett

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Restricting Trans Students’ Rights Would Also Gut Healthcare Nondiscrimination Law

By Siobhan M.

Earlier this month, House Republicans passed Speaker Mike Johnson’s rules package for the new Congress, which set a list of bills Republicans consider their top priorities. This included crackdowns on abortion providers and immigrants and additional protections for police. House Republicans’ first priority, though, is to ensure that for purposes of Title IX—the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education—“sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive sex biology and genetics at birth.” This is, on its face, a ban on school sports participation by transgender students, and news coverage of the proposal has largely reflected that. Some coverage has also correctly reported that this would give schools license to discriminate against trans students on other issues like bathroom or locker room access. However, absent from most reporting is a massive legal consequence of the bill: it would be a giveaway to private health insurance companies, and large employers who pay health insurance costs, by effectively removing nondiscrimination requirements for many insurance and medical providers.

To understand why, a brief explanation of somewhat convoluted federal law is necessary. When the federal government prohibited some discrimination in healthcare in 2010, it did not directly name the classes it protected from discrimination. Instead, it banned discrimination—in healthcare or insurance providers that receive federal funding—“on the ground prohibited under” other federal laws. One of these “prohibited grounds” comes from Title IX, where some federal appellate courts have ruled that the prohibition on sex-based discrimination includes discrimination against LGBTQ+ students. Based on these appellate court holdings—which are disputed in more conservative circuits, and to some extent at the Supreme Court—queer and trans people should also be protected from discrimination in covered healthcare settings. 

Republicans seek to settle this debate by ensuring that covered insurance providers can deny insurance claims from their queer and trans customers with impunity. Under their proposed HB28 and the paired senate bill, sex under Title IX would be defined exclusively by “a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” and healthcare nondiscrimination law would be worthless against an insurer denying coverage for a lesbian couple’s fertility treatment or a trans woman’s orchiectomy. Under this definition, legal advocates for LGBTQ+ people could still argue that some anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination is prohibited sex discrimination, but federal law defining trans women as men, and vice versa, will dramatically narrow the scope of these potential arguments. In the aggregate, systematic denial of these claims would allow health insurance companies and employers to grow their profits on the backs of some of the poorest demographic groups in America.

Despite these high stakes for healthcare access, discussion of the Republican proposal has been framed almost exclusively in terms of sports participation. Articles from Politico, Fox News, and ABC’s National News Desk all discuss this purely as an issue of sports participation. Democratic lawmakers largely avoid talking about transgender issues altogether, and some have even voiced support of sports participation bans. By altogether ignoring the effects on healthcare access, this discussion hides the material benefits of the proposed ban for private employers and health insurance companies and instead cynically pits trans nondiscrimination rights against cis women.

These changes would even help insurance companies discriminate in blue states like Massachusetts. While Massachusetts state law prohibits many health insurers from discrimination against queer and trans people, a loophole in this law means it does not apply to employers who “self-insure,” which tend to be the largest corporations. For workers at these large employers, this bill would strip crucial federal protection while allowing their bosses to rake in even greater profits.

Ultimately, as long as private health insurance exists, its profiteers will continue denying necessary medical care. This is their business model, and they reinvest enough profits in bipartisan political contributions to ensure neither capitalist party, Democratic or Republican, will challenge their extortion of the American people. While we must fight this Republican effort to further restrict LGBTQ+ healthcare, we must also recognize that true queer and trans liberation requires a vision of healthcare, including gender-affirming transition-related care, that is free to all as a basic human right.

Siobhan M. is a member of Boston DSA and the National Organization of Legal Services Workers, UAW 2320. The views expressed herein are her own and do not represent her employer.

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By Chris Brady

Austin, Texas – This past Thursday, AFL-CIO President Liz Schuler and SEIU President April Verret announced the merging of their respective unions at the annual AFL-CIO’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference. 

The merger represents an important development between America’s largest labor federation and one of the largest non-affiliated unions.

SEIU’s two million workers will join AFL-CIO’s almost thirteen million membership ranks, representing a labor re-alignment to emphasize unity. The move comes in the wake of the Trump re-election, which has caught a weakened American left and dwindling union movement on its back foot. 

SEIU is one of the more effective major unions at organizing new workplaces in the private sector, and has backed the budding Starbucks Workers Union through its national affiliate Workers United. SEIU was famously behind the fast food workers’ “Fight for $15” campaign. The AFL-CIO has historically been criticized for complacency, and some are hopeful SEIU can bring a needed militancy to the trade union going forward. But SEIU also has a reputation as one of the most top-down, staff-driven unions, with critics arguing that staff use workers as campaign props to give the appearance of worker-led campaigns, while actually pulling the strings behind the scenes. Regardless, the consolidation of working power before another Trump term is a refreshing development.

In AFL-CIO’s statement, President Schuler is quoted “CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we’re standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they’d join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to unrig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job.”

Reunited After 20 Years Apart

The merger marks the reunification of SEIU with the AFL-CIO since the two parted ways in 2005. That year, four big unions – the Teamsters, UFCW, SEIU, and UFW – boycotted the annual convention. Then in September of 2005, these unions as well as the Laborers (LiUNA), the Carpenters, and UNITE HERE disaffiliated to launch Change To Win, a new, rival federation as an alternative to the AFL-CIO. 

With Teamsters President James P Hoffa heading the new federation, the seven departing unions represented some 40 percent of the federations membership. The split was based in part on a clash of personalities, but also on competing visions for renewed organizing between a large number of smaller craft unions and a handful of multi-industry mega-unions. Members pledged to invest some 75 percent of the federations funds into new organizing, instead of spending money on politics. But although the split had similarities with the 1930s formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizing, many consider the split to be more about reducing dues paid to the AFL-CIO and preserving the power of union presidents than an actual genuine effort to reignite the labor movement. 

Change To Win, now known as the Strategic Organizing Center, failed to develop into a true competitor with the AFL-CIO. The federation failed to achieve higher levels of organizing success, with UFCW, UNITE HERE, and the Laborers returning to the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters disaffiliated from Change To Win after conflicts with other coalition members. With SEIU’s return, Teamsters and the Carpenters are now the last major unions from the Change To Win effort to remain disaffiliated, although several other unions not involved in the Change To Win effort are also not part of the AFL-CIO, including the National Education Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Former SEIU president Andy Stern, who was one of the orchestrators of the Change to Win coalition, posted on X in support of the merger, “An appropriate time to unite SEIU’s strength with other unions. Change to Win was a courageous attempt by seven unions to build something stronger for workers by confronting structural and organizing issues that divide workers. A worthy experiment at a moment in history.”

The Work Begins

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Conference was peppered with AFL-CIO and SEIU leaders bashing the Republicans as enemies of the working class. A predictable occurrence, given the easy dunk opportunity the crypto-fascist GOP provides, and that both union presidents were “All In” for the Kamala Harris campaign. These comments remind class-conscious labor organizers that there is much work to be done – although unifying our organizations is a positive step – as long as we view working power through a faulty bourgeois partisan political lens, our potential for revolutionary change is negated. 

Although the spectacle of union leadership politics and affiliations is relevant to workers, our task remains regardless of our organizations’ standing. We must organize, in new workplaces, and within our current union bureaucracies. Much like how unions are reacting to anticipated new attacks on labor by consolidating, and we must react to pressure them to become more militant. This demand is essential and transforms any reductive political platitudes.

Nonetheless, today marks a shift for the American labor movement. Bold steps like this were and continue to be badly needed. There are reasons for revolutionary optimism, as airport service worker and SEIU member Payton Abrams said, “…we’re coming together to help build the biggest, baddest labor movement this country has ever seen. This is how we change the rules…With our AFL-CIO siblings beside us, we’ll be unstoppable.”

Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA.

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SOMERVILLE, MA — Unit B of the Somerville Municipal Employees Union (SMEU) has at last obtained a contract from the City of Somerville after their prior contract expired more than 900 days ago. SMEU’s members voted to ratify the new contract this week. The union includes public workers from city departments like Public Works, Water and Sewer, the Library, the City Clerk, Parking, and Inspectional Services.

The Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and our Somerville Neighborhood Group congratulate our SMEU friends and neighbors on their hard-fought victory. We further hope Mayor Ballantyne will quickly settle with and propose fair contracts to SMEU units A, C, and D. 

Willie Burnley Jr., a Boston DSA member and Somerville City Councilor (At-Large) who has long pushed for expansion of paid family and medical leave for municipal employees, offered his support for the union: “I’m so grateful that SMEU will receive increased wages and be some of the first municipal employees to benefit from expanded paid family and medical leave, after years of advocacy.” 

Boston DSA member and Ward 2 Councilor J.T. Scott added: “Nobody takes care of our city better than the people who live and work here. Strong, local, union jobs are essential to providing better city services, and also reduce costs to the taxpayers by preventing outsourcing to firms outside our community. The workers of SMEU have deserved better for a long time, and it’s my hope that this contract is just the first step in reversing decades of underinvestment in the people and infrastructure of our city.”

SMEU’s contract victory demonstrates that when workers organize, they win. Boston DSA members will continue fighting for working class wins in our own unions and in solidarity with unions in our communities, like SMEU.