A friend of mine once helped me understand the size of our union by noting that in Massachusetts the list of the largest cities goes like this: Boston, Worcester, Springfield … and the MTA! Yes, if we were a city, the 115,000 members who make up the MTA would be the fourth-largest city in the Commonwealth.
Like a big city, we have so much going on at any given time. We support our 400 locals and chapters in their efforts to negotiate and enforce strong contracts; advocate at the state level for our priorities (such as ending punitive high-stakes testing and reinvesting in high-quality, debt-free public higher education); manage roughly 200 staff members; run professional development workshops and union conferences; deepen our membership’s political education about the right-wing attacks against us; and, always, seek ways large and small to build our power to win the public schools and colleges we all deserve.
While some of this work can be frustrating and exhausting, it is all meaningful when we keep our fundamental commitments in mind. Much of it is truly inspiring and joyful.
The greatest pleasure and honor of this job, and the times when I most feel the power of our membership, is when Deb and I are invited to show up to support members standing up for themselves and their schools – for a living wage for essential Education Support Professionals, for prep time so educators can better serve their students, for paid parental leave and for smaller class sizes.
Recently, we joined almost the full membership of the Gloucester Association of Educational Support Paraprofessionals at their first bargaining session, surrounding the bargaining teams in the high school library, remaining respectful but also appropriately intimidating. The Gloucester paras demanded a $40,000 starting salary, which matches what state Representative Erika Uyterhoeven has laid out in legislation recently endorsed by the MTA Board of Directors.
I had the pleasure of marching through my old middle school (which my three children also attended) in Amherst, insisting that this allegedly progressive town live up to those values and pay ESPs more than $18,000 a year, and pay all educators fairly. Parents and students joined us in force.
We also joined Stoneham paraprofessionals for a standout before they won their best contract in years. We were proud to join the righteous Quincy Education Association members as they stood up to a stubborn mayor and won better pay and parental leave benefits.
And, of course, we have had the honor of standing with our locals who chose to take strike votes this past fall and winter. They bravely said with their actions: "Enough is enough." And they won tremendous advances for their members. Your contributions – by showing up or sending funds to support these members – were part of this deeply moving experience.
Sometimes we may forget that the fundamental basis of our power as a union begins with the solidarity we show with one another, one local at a time, one action after another.
In this union, the simple action of standing beside each other – at a school committee meeting, in bargaining, for your local members or for those in other communities – is the muscle that builds our collective power.
This is what we mean by solidarity. We are ready to show up anywhere and everywhere to support our members currently engaged in local struggles.
Soon, we’ll distribute specifics about an event in June we will host with Heather McGhee, author of "The Sum of Us." She is a brilliant writer and policy expert, whose work shows how we can reap what she calls a "solidarity dividend" – a better, fairer society for all – by learning to build connections across lines that have been deliberately set up to divide working people.
Unlike other writers from the left side of the political spectrum, McGhee embraces unions (while fully recognizing the failures, including around race, in our history) as crucial actors in the economy and our political system, without whom we cannot achieve our goals.
Recently, I had the chance to again visit the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, a museum that holds some of the finest Impressionist paintings in the world. One especially grabbed me this time – an unfinished painting by Paul Cézanne. Much of the canvas was untouched, even as others were gloriously complete in his revolutionary style.
We have a 178-year history in the MTA, and so much is established and solid in the work we do.
But like the unfinished painting, the beauty of this moment in our history is that we are in the process of becoming something more. We are becoming a union that leads in defining what a quality public education is, and insisting it is a right, in preK through higher ed, for every resident. We are becoming a union that makes "good trouble," in the words of the late U.S. Representative John Lewis, a union that leads in fighting for the "solidarity dividend," and that is clear about its mission to represent our members, the workers, who every day nurture and fight for our students, our collective future.
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MTA Today welcomes letters to the editor from MTA members. Letters should be no longer than 200 words. Each letter submitted for publication must address a topic covered in MTA Today, must be signed and must include the writer’s telephone number for confirmation purposes. Opinions must be clearly identified as belonging to the letter-writer. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and style. To submit a letter, mail it to MTA Today, 2 Heritage Drive, 8th floor, Quincy, MA 02171-2119, or email it to mtatodayletters@massteacher.org. For additional information, please refer to the guidelines posted on www.massteacher.org.
