THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE

Massachusetts State House, Boston, MA

International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 25, Boston MA

September 2023 - November 2023

This exhibition honors Massachusetts labor unions.

I was raised to see unions in terms of fairness. My grandmother, who was arrested during a Philadelphia Federation of Teachers strike, taught me to be aware of the inherent power imbalance in the workplace. To her, labor unions rebalanced the scales of justice. She also told me that if you think you’re going to get arrested, bring a toothbrush.

When The Embrace, Boston’s new monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., unveiled on the Common, I started to reread some of his profoundly strident and melodically poetic speeches in support of organized labor. Throughout the 1960’s Dr. King gave a series of lectures to the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and AFSCME among others that attempted to unite labor and civil rights in common cause. Cornell West’s compendium, The Radical King, contains a great chapter on these speeches. Dr. King’s words left me with two thoughts: one, he would be gladdened to see how contemporary unions have become inclusive collaborations; two, his prescience sadly illuminates the ongoing nature of the fight for fair work.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters represent UPS workers across the country. The union here in Boston is IBT Local 25. This summer the Teamsters adjudicated a new UPS contract under the leadership of General President Sean M. O’Brien. This fraught negotiation touched on issues like whether or not the trucks had to have air conditioning. For context, in 2022 UPS earned $100.3 billion in revenue with $13.1 billion in profit. No air conditioning? In the summer? In the south?

The UPS workers’ struggle seemed to embody the effort of organized labor at large. Here was a union fighting a multinational corporation on behalf of workers who, according to Indeed, earned as little as $12/hr. When I started planning this exhibition, the fate of the UPS contract was uncertain. Combining images of Local 25 UPS workers with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed to join their humanity with his righteousness. Dr. King is the closest we have to a civic saint; his words, next to our friends and neighbors, gives moral weight to their cause. And, his exhortations, echoing from the past, shows us how far we have to go to make work fair. As Dr. King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

In August, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and UPS agreed to the terms of a historic concession-less contract. In the words of General President O’Brien, “This contract sets a new standard in the labor movement and raises the bar for all workers.” Poetically, the UPS workers’ new contract designates MLK Day as a paid holiday for the first time. It is with great pleasure then, that this exhibition celebrates IBT’s triumph on behalf of the 340,000 UPS workers. Let it be so for all American labor.