Labor news, analysis, and working class life and culture in Massachusetts, as reported by union members and DSA members
Site: www.Working-Mass.com
Working Mass
"Nurses are the ones who keep us alive. This is part of an ongoing war on the working class."
Nurses at Baystate Franklin have been struggling with poor nurse-to-patient ratios, leading to the drive to a potential strike.
working-mass.com/2026/05/29/g...
The fight shows an upsurge in letter carrier rank-and-file organizing locally – but why? What brings rank-and-file postal workers together amidst a bad contract, tensions within the union over its bargaining process, and hostile federal government?
working-mass.com/2026/04/17/l...
"All this effort on the part of DHS to keep people from seeing into the facilities, and to keep those trapped inside from describing what is happening there, suggests that ICE feels that they have something to hide," writes @moiradonegan.bsky.social.
Somerville non-union city workers have seen their job descriptions slowly divorced from requested responsibilities and compensation.
Meanwhile, compensation for non-union workers became less and less clear.
In her op-ed, Siobhan McDonough argues:
"Our city’s residents overwhelmingly oppose the oppressive U.S. blockade of Cuba... with Congress non-responsive, that duty falls to the representative Cambridge City Council."
working-mass.com/2026/05/08/o...
"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."
@hgsuuaw.bsky.social strikes as other Harvard unions have so far chosen other strategies despite contract alignment, but anger on and off campus towards @harvard.edu is growing.
A school focused entirely on attacks from above increasingly faces dissent from below.
working-mass.com/2026/05/07/h...
"I was on the phone with my steward when he found out that we got a new contract. We were both working a 12-hour that day, but finding out that we got the same contract that we voted down.. killed any morale, finding out that they took 700 days to negotiate to give us the same thing we said no to."
Republished from New Labor Forum in advance of UAW Convention -
working-mass.com/2026/06/09/s...
Somerville and its new mayor @jake4somerville face a test from organized labor as the city’s executive sits across from a burgeoning municipal workers’ union: Somerville Workers United (SWU) – @AFSCME93:
working-mass.com/2026/05/04/s...
The immigrants’ courage is matched only by the severity of their limited options. Ultimately, the pressure for change will have to come from the outside
By: Nelson Lichtenstein This article was originally published in New Labor Forum. These positions are the authors’ own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass. Original Editor’s Not...
By: Mary Ann Sheppard GREENFIELD – On April 7, 2026, unionized nurses at Baystate Franklin Medical Center staged an informational picket to advocate for better wages and staffing. The picket, organize...
By: Vanessa Bartlett BOSTON – On Sunday, February 22, postal workers gathered for a rally in front of South Station. Agitated by growing managerial bloat and stagnant starting wages, postal workers af...
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 Cambr...
working-mass.com
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 (S...
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 surge to the end of their t...
