Collecting area: Labor

New Song Library letterhead

Founded by Johanna Halbeisen in 1974, the New Song Library was a collaborative resource for sharing music with performers, teachers and community activists, who in turn shared with a wide variety of audiences. Based initially in Boston, the Library was devoted to the music of social change and particularly music that reflected the lives and aspirations of workers, women and men, elders and young people, gays and lesbians, other minorities, and Third World people.

This collection contains over forty years of organizational and operational records of the New Song Library along with hundreds of sound recordings, primarily audiocassettes made at concerts, music festivals, song swaps, and gatherings of the People’s Music Network. The Library also collected newsletters and magazines on folk music, and most importantly dozens of privately produced songbooks and song indexes.

From its origins in 1899 as the Northampton Central Labor Union, the Northampton Labor Council coordinated political activity and worked for union cooperation in strikes, boycotts, and celebrations. With 29 unions in its ranks by 1903, it was one of the few labor councils to include both AFL and CIO affiliates during the period of their intense competition during the 1930s, however from 1945 until the AFL-CIO merger, CIO unions were excluded. By 1985, the NLC had 14 affiliated local unions.

As the coordinating body for the political and social activities of fourteen labor unions in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the surrounding area, the Labor Council generated union support for strikes, boycotts, and celebrations, and hosting annual Labor Day parades. Includes photocopies of four minutebooks, spanning the years 1933-1985.

Norton, Mass., was a manufacturing center during the early days of the industrial revolution. During the 1830s and 1840s, its mills turned out sheet copper, cotton goods, boots and shoes, leather goods, iron castings, ploughs, and baskets.

The unidentified owner of this daybook was a general provisioner in the Bristol County, Massachusetts, towns of Norton and Mansfield. This daybook records a relatively brisk trade in relatively small quantities of food, cloth, fuel, wood, shoes, paper goods, glassware, and iron. While the Norton Manufacturing Company (a textile manufacturer) was among the steady customers, the storekeeper also dealt extensively with individuals.

A writer, scholar and leader in organized labor for over 50 years, Peter B. Olney began his career in the early 1970s by organizing the machine shop where he worked in Roxbury, Massachusetts into the United Electrical Workers, fully committed to helping the workforce take control of their own lives and destiny. Through periods of extraordinary cultural, technological and industry upheaval, with a particular focus on the immigrant workers community, Olney followed where that commitment led, becoming an “industrial salt” in Boston and Cambridge, bringing a union into non-union facilities or strengthening the union’s position in union facilities; an organizer and researcher at the ILGWU in Southern California; an organizer/coordinator at the Furniture Workers’ office of the IUE in Huntington Park, CA; an organizer at the Janitors’ office of the SEIU in Los Angeles and active in Justice for Janitors; a founding member of the LAMAP (Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project); the Director of Organizing at the ILWU (International Longshoremen Warehouse Union) for 16 years; Associate Director of the ILE (Institute for Labor and Employment) at the University of California for 3 years; and a member of the faculty at the Building Trades Academy at Michigan State University. He has a Masters in Business Administration from UCLA and regularly contributes to ongoing discussions, publications and scholarship, online and in print, about the changing face of the Labor Movement with particular focus on organizing strategies, class struggles, immigration and the political climate.

Drawing from the records of these many organizations, the Olney Papers provide insights into labor organizing during a period of American history characterized by huge cultural shifts and rapid technological development, and include correspondence, memorandums, notes, white papers, articles, newspaper/magazine clippings and other printed matter, corporate reports and presentations, and a wide variety of  internal administrative documents. Of particular note are strategic planning documents for the organizations with which Olney was engaged.

Founded in Athol, Mass., prior to1922, the Pine Beach Association operated a summer resort on the northern end of Lake Rohunta, a 383-acre reservoir owned largely by the Rodney Hunt Company. Recognizing the touristic and recreational opportunities, the Association built Pine Beach into a facility that included the Rohunta Inn (the former Elm Lodge Clubhouse), a restaurant, camping facilities, and a lifeguard-patrolled swimming area with water slides and other recreational facilities, all with the intent of becoming the “leading inland bathing beach of New England.” Although the hurricane of 1938 washed away Rodney Hunt’s dam and hydroelectric station, Pine Beach remained a popular destination, freely available to the company’s employees. In the 1980s, the properties were sold to the not-for-profit Lake Rohunta Beach Association, an association of 15 residential properties.

This small collection contains postcards, photographs, and ephemeral material relating to the Pine Beach Association, concentrated in its early years.

Established in 1968, PATCO was certified as the exclusive representative for all FAA air traffic controllers. A little more than a decade later, union members went on strike demanding better working conditions despite the fact that doing so was in violation of a law banning strikes by government unions. In response to the strike, the Reagan administration fired the strikers, more than 11,000, and decertified the union. Over time the union was eventually reformed, first in 1996 as an affiliate with the Federation of Physicians and Dentists union, and later as an independent, national union in 2004.

Correspondence, financial records, notes and memos documenting the activities of the Boston area branch of PATCO. Letters, announcements, and planning documents leading up to the 1981 strike shed light on the union’s position.

A shipfitter and union activist, Charley Richardson was a visonary labor educator. After working for a time in a machine shop and driving a school bus, Richardson hired on as a shipfitter at Sun Ship in Philadelphia in 1976, and grew active in the labor movement as a steward for the United Steelworkers. After relocating to the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy seven years later, he sustained a workplace injury that ended his career, but he remained active in the workers’ cause. Helping served as director of the Labor Extension Program at UMass Lowell and helped to create the Technology and Work Program where he and his wife Nancy Lessin developed educational programs to aid unions in countering harmful workplace changes and build strength and solidarity for the union. An advocate for social and economic justice, he became a vocal opponent of the U.S. war in Iraq in 2002, and was co-founder of Military Families Speak Out. After a long battle with cancer, Richardson passed away in May 2013.

The Richardson papers document over thirty years of work as a labor educator and United Steelworkers activist. At the heart of the collection are materials relating to Richardson’s research and instruction at UMass Lowell, teaching “continuous bargaining” and other techniques for unions coping with economic and political change. The collection is informed throughout by Richardson’s concerns for workplace safety and health and the impact of technology, downsizing, deregulation, and globalization.

A labor attorney and activist, Craig Robinson was born in Hartford, Conn., on August 6, 1952, and raised in Stafford. After rising tuition led him to drop out of the University of Connecticut in 1971, Robinson worked in a variety of manual jobs until he was hired by the US Postal Service in 1974. From the time of his assignment to the bulk mail facility in Springfield the next year, Robinson was an active member of the American Postal Workers Union, eventually serving as steward, vice president, and president of his Local, and his activism often created friction with management. Earning his BA at UMass Amherst (1980) and JD from the Western New England School of Law (1984), he began practicing labor law, moving to full time in 1991. Devoted to workplace justice, he served as General Counsel for the Pioneer Valley Central Labor Council and for Locals of the United Roofers Union and Amalgamated Transit Union, among others, and was a founding board member of the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health. Robinson died on June 17, 2007, and is survived by his wife Linda Tonoli, and son.

The Robinson papers contain a record of labor activism in the Pioneer Valley and beyond. The collection includes retained copies of legal filings relating to arbitration and other labor-related cases, along with articles written by and about Robinson, and an assortment of other notes and correspondence.

In October 1978 a group of clerical workers at Tufts united in an effort to organize their coworkers with Local 925, S.E.I.U. Isolated and scattered across campus, the clerical employees at the university greeted this call to unionize with support, hoping it would mean an improvement in salaries and in grievance procedures. By the summer of the following year, 60% of eligible employees signed authorization cards, more than required to vote on the issue, and an election early that fall was expected. Tufts administration, however, delayed the election by disputing the composition of the bargaining unit. Formal hearings took place from September through the end of the year, but instead of resolving the case, the Boston Labor Board referred it to Washington on January 25, 1980. Nine months later the election was finally held, but the results were not what were anticipated more than a year earlier. Rather than an easy victory to unionize, the majority of clerical staff at Tufts voted not to make Local 925 their exclusive bargaining representative. The administration’s anti-union campaign waged throughout 1979 and 1980 had a tremendous impact on the employees at the university, and a number of concessions made on wages, health insurance, and vacations further eroded support for organizing with Local 925.

The collection documents the efforts of Tufts clerical workers to unionize during 1978-1980. The group’s biweekly newsletter, Inside Tufts, written by the university’s employees and published by Local 925, offers an important behind-the-scenes look on two fronts: the issues and grievances of the clerical staff at Tufts and the reasons behind their decision to unionize. Materials relating to the efforts of other Boston-area institutions, in particular colleges and universities, are also included.

W.R. Smith was a Vice President and organizer for the International Brotherhood of Papers Makers (I.B.P.M.) who principally attempted to gain union conditions for papers workers near Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Includes letters to and from I.B.P.M. president James T. Carey as well as a 116-page transcript of Smith’s organizing reports for the years 1914-1920, documenting his activities in Holyoke, Massachusetts, among other cities and towns in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington.