To the editor:
I can almost hear the cheers of the Irish, Italian, French-Canadian, and African-American workers at Arnold Print Works a century ago, and almost see the high-fives of their descendants at Sprague Electric Company a half century later.
They link arms in solidarity as they learn that the newest labor force in the buildings they worked and struggled in have begun to organize at MASS MoCA, as reported in The Berkshire Edge on March 12.Â
The issues — wages, job insecurity, and working conditions — that bring the MoCA employees to seek union recognition through UAW Local 2110 are the same that spurred their forebears to fight for collective bargaining in an earlier time.
And similar issues have brought other museum and “cultural” workers throughout Berkshire County to organize, via social media, into “Change Berkshire Culture,” a call for respect and dignity in the so-called “creative economy.”
Maybe this is the start of the Berkshire Democracy Spring! The words I hear are sung by a young Judy Collins in a 1964 documentary, “The Inheritance”:
“Freedom doesn’t come like a bird on the wing,
Doesn’t come down like the summer rain,
Freedom, Freedom is a hard won thing
And every generation has to win it again.”
Maynard Seider
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The writer is professor emeritus of sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams.
