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The city workers' union drive

Updated September 21, 2026

What's happening

About 200 to 220 non-union Somerville city staff are trying to organize as Somerville Workers United, affiliated with AFSCME Council 93, and Mayor Jake Wilson has not voluntarily recognized them. The City Council unanimously asked him to on May 28, six days after layoffs that hit the proposed bargaining unit harder than anything else in city government (digest).

Wilson's public reason for not recognizing the union is that two unions have competing petitions before the state Department of Labor Relations covering some of the same positions, which he says obliges the city to stay neutral until the DLR sorts out who represents whom (Working Mass / Boston DSA). The DLR has not been reported to have resolved it since, and no recognition item appeared on the Council's Sept. 10 agenda either. The unionized workforce, meanwhile, keeps getting contracts: the city signed a three-year deal with Firefighters Local 76 on Sept. 15 with 2% raises each year (see capital plan), the Local 3 school custodians' contract is nearly finalized pending Council approval (Sept. 8 digest), and a memorandum of agreement with the UAW Community Schools Union was on the School Committee's Sept. 14 agenda. The Council itself spent 77 minutes in executive session on collective bargaining on Sept. 10 (item 26-1364), a session that the open-session discussion afterward tied to police oversight, not to this unit; see Civilian police oversight.

The story

Who is organizing

Somerville's unionized city workforce runs through the Somerville Municipal Employees Union (SMEU, sometimes written SMEA) and its units, plus the police, fire and school custodial unions. Roughly 200-plus professional staff — planners, program managers, equity and housing staff — sat outside all of it. Organizers first tried to fold themselves into SMEU; when that stalled they went to AFSCME Council 93 and formed Somerville Workers United, aiming at a unit of about 220 positions (Cambridge Day).

By Wilson's own account, the organizing team contacted his administration for the first time on May 12 (Cambridge Day). Kate Bossingham, an environmental policy manager in Sustainability and Environment, told the Council the union sent two meeting requests that May and got no response.

May 20 to May 22

The sequence organizers keep returning to runs over three days. On May 20 Wilson spoke in support of unions at the Greater Boston Labor Council's municipal legislative breakfast at the Somerville Armory. That afternoon, Bossingham said, he went into layoff meetings with staff "most of which were within the Somerville Workers United proposed bargaining unit" (Cambridge Day). That same evening the Council met in a special session called by the mayor and spent three and a half hours — 7:38 p.m. to 11:11 p.m. — in closed executive session on collective bargaining (digest).

On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend the city announced it was cutting 29 positions, 13 of them filled, to close a $5.4 million FY27 shortfall. A city spokesperson said two of the 13 were already-unionized employees and that the city "is not aware which positions are proposed for inclusion in a union purportedly being organized."

SWU said a majority of the laid-off workers had signed union cards, and named where 10 of the 13 came from: four in Health and Human Services, two in Strategic Planning and Community Development, two in Racial and Social Justice, one in Grants Development, one in Sustainability and Environment (Cambridge Day). At the June 10 budget hearing, resident Nate Clauser told the Finance Committee roughly 90% of the eliminated positions sat inside the proposed SWU unit — about a 15% cut to that unit during an active organizing campaign (digest).

The retaliation claim

Working Mass, the labor outlet published by Boston DSA, reported that three SWU organizing-committee or core organizers were among those laid off, and quoted sustainability planner Josh Eckert-Lee saying "a fair amount of these layoffs could absolutely be seen as retaliatory." These are advocacy-outlet claims attributed to named workers; no unfair-labor-practice charge has been reported.

The same reporting carries a separate complaint from the recognized side of the house. Emily Mayernik, a licensed mental health counselor and SMEU member, said the city laid off an SMEU colleague on May 20 and told the union only on May 21 — at the same time informing SMEU that Mayernik would go the next day. She said SMEU sent a cease-and-desist letter the city ignored, and that she was sent home immediately with active cases open: "We don't disappear on people. That's not acceptable behavior." She told the Globe it was "discouraging" that a job with at-risk children and families was what the city treated as expendable (Globe).

May 28: the Council weighs in

Every councilor signed on to a resolution supporting voluntary recognition. Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen, a co-sponsor: "I've been on this council for nine years. I have not seen layoffs." Three workers testified. Luis Quizhpe, laid off weeks short of four years as strategic planning and equity manager, said recognition "would have prevented the work we were doing for our most vulnerable residents from being unceremoniously strangled." Benjamin Wyner, still employed as inclusionary housing program manager, said his division lost two of the positions it had just added and that he had not taken a full lunch break in about six months.

The Council also approved two orders from At-Large Councilor Will Mbah requiring the administration to list every cut position and its department, explain how the cuts square with the mayor's equity agenda, and come before the Council to present the reorganization. Mbah: "If municipal government doesn't reflect the population itself, then don't use the word equity in your administration." The fate of the department he was defending is on Racial and Social Justice becomes Equity and Belonging.

Council resolutions are non-binding. SWU met Wilson the next day, May 29, to ask for recognition directly, and said it had the numbers to file for Written Majority Authorization — the Massachusetts card-check route — if he declined.

Where it sits

Wilson says he supports the effort: "I fully support workers' rights to unionize, and I'm looking forward to working with the group and the organizers helping them at AFSCME." He also hired former Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Steve Tolman as an advisor on city contract negotiations; the Globe counted five expired union contracts, four more expiring in June, and seven under active negotiation as of late May.

Meanwhile the recognized unions kept getting paid: $719,817 in retroactive SMEU Unit D money on April 23, $196,086 for the Unit D vacation payout in June, $204,400 for a three-year SEIU Chapter 3 school custodians contract on July 9, and $937,409 from the Salary Contingency Account for a Firefighters Local 76 agreement on Aug. 27 (item 26-1253). Negotiations with the patrol officers' union remain open and are entangled with body cameras.

What's next

  • DLR representation ruling — The competing petitions have to be resolved before the city says it will engage; no hearing date has been announced.
  • Sept. 22, 2026 — Finance meets again; collective bargaining funding items surface here first, and any SWU contract would eventually need Council money. The Local 3 custodians' contract is the next one due.
  • Anytime — SWU has said it can file for Written Majority Authorization; a filing, a DLR election, or a voluntary recognition would each end the standoff.
  • September 2026 — Workers told Working Mass in June they expected another round of layoffs within about three months (outcome not in our sources yet).