While the unions had sat out the ini­tial phase of the occu­pa­tion, some of the occu­piers had set out to win them over. More than a few had union mem­bers in their fam­i­lies or in their net­works of friends. Oth­ers had his­to­ries of stu­dent-labor activism or grad­u­ate stu­dent union­ism. Still oth­ers had ties to white-col­lar unions like the Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca East and the Pro­fes­sion­al Staff Con­gress, or to dis­si­dent ten­den­cies with­in the teach­ers and team­sters unions. Togeth­er, they had formed the Labor Out­reach Com­mit­tee, send­ing ​“fly­ing squads” across the city to sup­port local union fights.

Since the finan­cial cri­sis, mil­lions of union work­ers had been tar­get­ed for cut­backs, lay­offs, wage freezes, and fur­loughs. New York City employ­ees had not seen a raise since 2009. Edu­ca­tion work­ers had been faced with mass lay­offs, school clo­sures and bruis­ing bud­get cuts. In the pri­vate sec­tor, the con­ces­sions demand­ed were even more extreme. Ver­i­zon had sought to squeeze high­er health care pre­mi­ums and a pen­sion freeze out of its work­force, trig­ger­ing a fif­teen-day, 45,000-strong strike against the tele­com giant. But by the fall of 2011, orga­nized labor had lit­tle to show for its trouble.

The 99 Per­cent move­ment was made, not only by occu­py­ing squares and get­ting arrest­ed for it, but also by build­ing bridges with the nation’s embat­tled labor move­ment. It was the Occu­py-labor insur­gency that would help the move­ment pave a path­way from the polit­i­cal mar­gins to the mainstream.

The first was in protest of the Sotheby’s auc­tion house and its lock­out of 42 union­ized art han­dlers, who process its Picas­sos, its Rem­brandts, its Bacons and its Munchs, and who were now fac­ing replace­ment by tem­po­rary nonunion work­ers. It began on the morn­ing of Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 22, as hun­dreds pick­et­ed out­side the well-appoint­ed head­quar­ters of Sotheby’s, at 72nd Street and York, in the heart of one of the wealth­i­est con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts in the coun­try, form­ing a sort of gaunt­let for the buy­ers in busi­ness suits.

On the inside, nine occu­piers stood up one by one over the course of the two-hour action, dis­rupt­ing the sales of De Koon­ings, Calders, and Thiebauds: ​“Sotheby’s made $680 mil­lion last year, then kicked their art han­dlers out on the street!” ​“Sotheby’s is fight­ing a class war … and it is unac­cept­able!” ​“The greed in this build­ing is a direct exam­ple of the greed that has ruined our econ­o­my!” ​“Sotheby’s is auc­tion­ing off the Amer­i­can dream!” The dis­rupters were then man­han­dled by company’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty force and maneu­vered off the premises.

Accord­ing to Jack­ie DiS­al­vo, an old­er, white, work­ing-class intel­lec­tu­al active in the Labor Out­reach Com­mit­tee, the Sotheby’s auc­tion action ​“changed the impres­sion of what Occu­py was. It made it begin to seem that we did rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the 99 Per­cent.” Where­as, before the action, the press ​“act­ed as though Occu­py was a bunch of hip­pie slack­ers … once labor got involved, they couldn’t por­tray us that way.”

To occu­piers like Mary Clin­ton, the labor move­ment was a source of inspi­ra­tion. ​“I think we have a lot to learn from [its] hun­dred-year his­to­ry of direct action, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, and win­ning cam­paigns,” she insists. ​“There were a lot of par­al­lels with old-school pick­et lines … You respect­ed it as a sim­i­lar strug­gle and a sim­i­lar tactic.”

To many day one occu­piers, how­ev­er, who had come of age in an era of union decline and defeat, orga­nized labor was a source of skep­ti­cism. They tend­ed to eschew its ​“ver­ti­cal” pow­er struc­tures, paid orga­niz­ers, lists of demands, and links to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Though they shared a com­mon ene­my in Wall Street, many won­dered whether there could be any col­lab­o­ra­tion between hor­i­zon­tal­ist insti­tu­tions like the NYC­GA and high­ly union bureau­cra­cies like those of the AFL-CIO.

Two days after the Inspec­tor Bologna affair, Jon Kest, the ail­ing direc­tor of NY Com­mu­ni­ties for Change and a long­time labor orga­niz­er, had called a young occu­pi­er named Neli­ni Stamp into his down­town Brook­lyn office. ​“He was like, ​‘This is hap­pen­ing, this is exact­ly what we need,’ ” recalls Neli­ni. “ ​‘We have to sup­port this,’ [Kest con­tin­ued]. ​‘We’re going to get every labor union to do it.’ ” In the days that fol­lowed, they had been able to do just that. ​“We made occu­piers go and speak to union lead­ers. We made them have a dia­logue, have a con­ver­sa­tion. I was talk­ing to union pres­i­dents … and labor was lis­ten­ing.” That dia­logue was a trans­for­ma­tive moment for occu­piers like Neli­ni: ​“It became about the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole. With labor com­ing into the pic­ture … it just became a move­ment for me.”

My inter­views reveal that unions were com­pelled to ral­ly to Occupy’s side, not only by pres­sure from above, but also by a surge of sup­port from below. Accord­ing to one SEIU orga­niz­er, “[The unions] had seen their work­ers were invest­ed in this move­ment. They had seen that folks were in sol­i­dar­i­ty with [OWS] … The rank-and-file pushed their lead­er­ship because this was a thing that made sense to them.”

One of the first union locals to come on board was Local 100 of the Tran­sit Work­ers Union of Amer­i­ca (TWU), a noto­ri­ous­ly feisty out­fit with a his­to­ry of mil­i­tan­cy, rep­re­sent­ing 38,000 work­ers across the five bor­oughs. On Sep­tem­ber 28, an M5 bus dri­ver had idled his vehi­cle at Lib­er­ty Square, honked his horn, and pro­claimed that his union would be join­ing the protests that Fri­day. That night, the motion to endorse the occu­pa­tion was car­ried unan­i­mous­ly at an angry meet­ing of the union’s exec­u­tive board. By hitch­ing its wag­on to OWS, Local 100’s lead­er­ship would win new lever­age for its work­ers over Wall Street, City Hall, and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Authority.

Inde­pen­dent­ly, a group of aca­d­e­m­ic work­ers at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York had put out an open let­ter and Face­book event call­ing for a labor demon­stra­tion that Fri­day at One Police Plaza, head­quar­ters of the NYPD high com­mand. The call was sim­ply word­ed and pre­cise­ly aimed: ​“We the under­signed con­demn recent police attacks … Join us in call­ing for an end to police repres­sion of protests in New York, and to sup­port the ongo­ing Occu­py Wall Street demon­stra­tion.” Hun­dreds of trade unionists,from main­te­nance work­ers to tenured pro­fes­sors, answered the call from CUNY and descend­ed on One Police Plaza that Fri­day. Among the signs borne by a band of TWU mem­bers in match­ing ​“We Are 1” jer­seys: ​“Some things mon­ey can’t buy. I will not sub­mit to this sys­tem. I am here with no fear.”

That very day, thir­teen more unions would fol­low the lead of the tran­sit work­ers, vot­ing to endorse the occu­pa­tion as well as the upcom­ing ​“Community/​Labor March to Wall Street” on Octo­ber 5. Among the occu­piers’ new allies were pow­er­house pub­lic sec­tor unions like the Unit­ed Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers and the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, Coun­cil, and Munic­i­pal Employ­ees, along with the largest union local in the nation — the 400,000-member Local 1199 of the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union — which promised one week’s worth of food and a vol­un­teer force of reg­is­tered nurses.

At the same time, OWS earned the endorse­ment of four inter­na­tion­als with a com­bined mem­ber­ship of almost 2 mil­lion: the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca, the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers, Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed, and the Retail, Whole­sale and Depart­ment Store Union. In a mat­ter of days, the AFL-CIO as a whole would join the club, pledg­ing, ​“We will open our union halls and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters as well as our arms and our hearts to those with the courage to stand up and demand a bet­ter America.”

The occu­pa­tions had a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion effect on union mem­bers and lead­ers alike, show­ing that a broad-based move­ment for eco­nom­ic jus­tice, pow­ered by direct action and rad­i­cal democ­ra­cy, had the poten­tial to change the polit­i­cal equa­tion for work­ing peo­ple. ​“These young folks are out there and they’re singing our tune,” said Jim­Gan­non of the Tran­sit Work­ers Union. ​“They’re say­ing what we’ve been say­ing for quite some time, that the so-called shared sac­ri­fice is a one-way street. Young peo­ple face high unem­ploy­ment … and in many ways they’re in the same boat as pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are. So we all get togeth­er, and who knows? This might become a movement.”

Four days after the bat­tle of the Brook­lyn Bridge, we would catch anoth­er­glimpse of the Occu­py-labor alliance in action. The Octo­ber 5 ​“Community/​Labor March on Wall Street” would prove the movement’s most potent show of force to date. The call to action had been draft­ed, print­ed, and dis­trib­uted by allied unions: ​“Let’s march down to Wall Street to wel­come the pro­test­ers and show the faces of New York­ers hard­est hit by cor­po­rate greed.”

From the tri­umphal arch of Wash­ing­ton Square Park down to the steps of the Foley Square cour­t­hous­es, the signs of the times were on vivid dis­play, inscribed on squares of card­board and strips of fabric.

In the same square where the U.S. Dis­trict Court had upheld the Smith Act, mak­ing it a crime to ​“advo­cate the duty, neces­si­ty, desir­abil­i­ty … of over­throw­ing or destroy­ing [the] gov­ern­ment,” there were now open calls to ​“Turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square” and ​“Give Me Lib­er­ty or Give Me Death.”

Just down the street from the site of the Hard Hat Riot of 1970, where con­struc­tion work­ers had set upon stu­dent anti-war marchers with clubs and crow­bars, there were hard hats lift­ing a ​“Flag of Heroes” beside ​“Stu­dents and Work­ers Unit­ed in Sol­i­dar­i­ty with #OWS.” Togeth­er, they streamed into Foley, then south­bound toward Lib­er­ty Square, chant­i­ng, ​“Stu­dents! And labor! Shut the city down!”

The march also reflect­ed the chang­ing pro­file of the Amer­i­can work­ing class. There were tat­tooed team­sters from Local 445, but they were of many races, eth­nic­i­ties, and sex­u­al­i­ties. They stood side by side with their coun­ter­parts from Local 100, shar­ing slo­gans, small talk, and cig­a­rettes. There were nurs­es of all gen­ders, some of them march­ing in uni­form, bear­ing red-and-white pick­et signs that read, ​“America’s Nurs­es Sup­port #Occu­py­Wall­Street.” There were mus­cle-bound labor­ers from Local 108, but they marched under a bright blue flag fea­tur­ing an image of Plan­et Earth.

To the west and to the north, behind the union rank-and-file, stretched a long col­umn of 99 Per­centers in their ​“com­plex uni­ty”: undoc­u­ment­ed Amer­i­cans affirm­ing, ​“Somos El 99 Per­cent”; unem­ployed work­ers demand­ing ​“Jobs Not Cuts” and ​“Jobs Not Wars”; indebt­ed under­grad­u­ates inveigh­ing against ​“Inden­tured Servi­tude”; sin­gle moth­ers with their chil­dren, tes­ti­fy­ing, ​“I Can’t Afford to Go to the Doc­tor”; the home­less remind­ing the nation of its ​“44 Mil­lion on Food Stamps” and its ​“Mil­lions [of] Lost Homes.”

Yet for all the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of per­son­al nar­ra­tives and polit­i­cal mis­sives on dis­play, there was also an unprece­dent­ed coher­ence in some of the signs I saw and the chants I heard that day. This coher­ence was no acci­dent, I would lat­er learn, but a byprod­uct of the occu­piers’ deep­en­ing inter­de­pen­dence on their new­found allies. Some of the lead­ing unions had print­ed thou­sands of pick­et signs in bold black-and-white let­ter­ing bear­ing the most pop­u­lar of move­ment mantras: ​“WE ARE THE 99 Percent.”

Togeth­er with the chants of the same vin­tage, they evoked the col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty that remained the movement’s least com­mon denom­i­na­tor. As that iden­ti­ty was pro­ject­ed onto a nation­al screen, it would lend labor a new source of sol­i­dar­i­ty, the occu­piers a new seal of legit­i­ma­cy, and the Amer­i­can left a point of uni­ty long absent from the polit­i­cal scene.