MacKay Returns to Picket Line, Calls for Stronger State Support for Labor

Massachusetts State House candidate and former HGSU-UAW president Evan C. MacKay ’19 returned to the picket lines today, emphasizing the role of collective action and calling for stronger support from state leaders for organized labor.

MacKay, who participated in HGSU-UAW strikes in both 2019 and 2021, said the current strike reflects ongoing efforts to build solidarity across a bargaining unit with high turnover and widely varying working conditions.

“We’ve been doing a lot of acculturating people into being in a union, and the importance of solidarity as the union,” they said. “We do a lot of helping people understand the diversity of working conditions within our bargaining unit.”

While many of the union’s demands carry over from previous contract cycles, MacKay said this round of negotiations feels more urgent amid broader political pressures.

“Many of our members feel the urgency of a strong fighting union, given the attacks from the Trump administration,” they said.

MacKay said that emphasis on solidarity has also shaped their approach to electoral policies. Now making a second bid for State House, they stepped down as HGSU-UAW president in 2024 to run for the seat, losing only narrowly to State Rep. Marjorie C. Decker.

The union has placed renewed emphasis on protections for non-citizen workers amid a slew of deportations and visa revocations.

“The Trump administration has been hostile before, but it’s a different degree of targeting of international students,” MacKay said. “We need the strongest union contract possible to defend everybody, citizens, non-citizens, people of any different type of visa status, many people’s family members, targeted by the Trump administration. So that feels different.”

MacKay also criticized what they described as a lack of visible support from state leaders during past labor actions and the Trump administrations’ actions against higher education.

“We need to have the state legislature standing up in the face of the Trump administration’s attacks on our research, on our grants, on our funding, on our students, on our international members of our community,” MacKay said.