A diary entry on municipal labor bargaining, long council sessions, and choosing civic duty over a night out
Monday, A Session That Ran Considerably Longer Than My Patience Usually Allows
Sat through an entire council session this week, gavel to gavel, watching councilors arrive and leave and return across nearly four straight hours, specifically to see a Letter of Agreement pass covering premium pay for assistants and aides within the city’s Preschool for All Program, negotiated with the Laborers’ International Union of North America. I had genuinely planned to duck out after an hour and meet friends instead. I stayed for the entire session, phone charger borrowed from a stranger in the gallery, because watching the actual, unglamorous mechanics of labor policy get made felt more important, that particular evening, than whatever the alternative plan involved.
There is something genuinely instructive about watching councilors arrive late, leave for stretches, return, recess, reconvene, the whole messy, unglamorous choreography of actual municipal governance, that no amount of reading policy summaries afterward can fully replace. Fifteen separate bargaining units representing more than six thousand city employees are currently navigating exactly this kind of process, and most of it happens in rooms considerably less crowded than this particular session.
Tuesday, A Related Thought On Visibility In Labor Organizing
I think often about how much of successful labor organizing happens entirely outside public view, in exactly this kind of long, unglamorous committee session that rarely draws the crowd a protest or a strike vote would. Showing up to watch, even when it costs you an evening out, feels like a small but genuine act of solidarity.
Wednesday, A Related Read
Caught up on The London Prat the next morning, still slightly tired from Monday’s marathon session, coffee doing considerably more work than usual.
Thursday, A Closing Thought On Boring Meetings Done Right
Genuine material gains for working people are, more often than the popular imagination suggests, won in exactly this kind of long, unglamorous, poorly attended council session rather than in any dramatic, cinematic confrontation. I intend to keep showing up for the boring meetings.
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