State Rep. Amy Roeder: “I Owe My Entire Life to Labor”

At our biennial COPE Convention next month, we will present State Rep. Amy Roeder (D-Bangor) with the “Edie Beaulieu Legislative Award” for supporting workers in building our power, centering working class issues as a legislator and speaking passionately about what unions have meant to her personally. A member of three unions — the Part Time Faculty Association - AFT 4593, the Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA — Roeder embodies what it means to have a true labor champion in the Maine Legislature.

After taking our Worker Candidate Training in 2020, Roeder earned the Maine AFL-CIO endorsement for a Bangor seat in the Maine House of Representatives and proudly displayed it on her campaign signs. After winning the primary and general elections, Roeder successfully shepherded through legislation that will guarantee workers receive their earned vacation pay at the end of employment.  She also sponsored measures to ensure female firefighters receive properly fitting safety equipment and expand paid family leave eligibility to school staff.

When asked why she is so passionate about the labor movement, Roeder doesn’t miss a beat.

“I owe my entire life to labor,” she says.

It’s a story that begins in the early 1980s in Minnesota farm country where Roeder grew up. At the time, farming communities were going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve’s tightening of interest rates hit heavily indebted farmers hard, causing the value of farmland to drop 60 percent in the Midwest between 1981 and 1985. The economic shock not only forced farmers and their families off their land, but it caused a ripple effect throughout communities, as other businesses closed and workers were laid off.

Roeder recalls her family going through very difficult times as her parents tried to save every penny, even collecting aluminum cans to sell for scrap.

“We were not well off, but I hesitate to call my upbringing poor because there were always people poorer than we were in farm country in the 1980s,” recalls Roeder. “We were lower middle class, or as my mom called it, ‘upper lower class.’ My mom had such a sense of pride that she would never ask for a handout and at that time everyone was suffering.”

After working a number of different jobs, her father managed to get a temp job on the railroad and eventually landed a full-time union clerk position. With the good wages her mom earned as a union teacher and her father earned as union railway worker, her parents were finally able to save for retirement and put Roeder through college. Both of her parents made sacrifices to save money and squirreled away spare change so Roeder could graduate from college debt free. 

“I had ample reasons every day to believe in the power of solidarity over selfishness and unity in the face of greed,” she wrote in an op-ed last fall.

One day while the family was eating at a truck stop she recalls seeing her mother greet a woman with a tone of "near reverence." The woman, her mother told her, was one the Willmar Eight, a group of women who went on strike in 1977 to protest unequal pay and unequal opportunities for advancement for women at the Citizens National Bank in Willmar, Minnesota.  After setting up a picket in the dead of winter with a wind chill approaching 70 below zero, the National Labor Relations Board found in their favor, but declared the strike to be “economic,” which meant that they would receive no back pay and there was no guarantee that they would recover their jobs.

“Regardless, they struck a blow against unfairness, and it reverberated in our community for decades,” Roeder recalled. “The Willmar Eight were some of my first heroes, along with Wonder Woman and Mr. Rogers.”

She also vividly remembers the lessons her father taught her about solidarity and the sacrifices workers must make to improve the lives of themselves and their coworkers.

“There was this time when my parents were having an intense conversation about what they were going to do about money if dad's union went on strike and I remember my dad telling me, ‘you never cross a picket line.' I didn’t understand what he meant then, but now I know: you never do that because if you cede power, you’re going to end up with nothing.”

After graduating from college in 1995, Roeder set off on a career as a professional actor, while also working some other jobs to make ends meet. When she took a job at the Nashua School District in New Hampshire, she remembers how proud her parents were when she called to tell them she joined her first union.

“They were so proud. My mom usually responded to my news with ‘oh ok.’ As long as I didn’t say I was joining a cult, a nudist colony or a brothel she was usually ok with my choices,” she said.

Roeder eventually got cast in a show in Georgia, which is a so-called "right-to-work" state. As soon as she got the opportunity, she immediately joined the Actors Equity Association, which represents more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers. 

Through her membership in the union, Roeder says she was able to get benefits like earned vacation pay and sick time that gave her a cushion until her next gigs. 

She also saw first hand the power of solidarity in action when her friend and fellow cast member's mother passed away unexpectedly. Although he was non-union, the producers allowed him to take time off for the funeral, but considered laying him off while he took a few days to tend to his mother’s affairs.

“This multi-million dollar company wanted to cut a grieving man loose for about $3,000. When our stage manager heard that, he said, ‘I’ll quit and I’ll get everybody in the union to quit too,’” said Roeder. "The cast agreed to back our stage manager up and when we communicated that to the producers they reconsidered their position and our friend got everything that he was owed."

Roeder also ended up joining SAG-AFTRA, which represents screen actors, when a theater she worked for in Boston sold a sketch to HBO. While she occasionally takes screen roles — such as a part in the 2021 film Downeast, which was filmed and set in Maine — her bread and butter remains stage acting. When she’s not in the Legislature or acting, she also teaches at the University of Maine, where she is a member of the Part-Time Faculty Association (AFT).

Roeder says she is especially thankful to union members who fought and continue to fight for gender pay equity, better paid leave policies and other issues that disproportionately harm women workers. She is particularly inspired by young women in the Maine labor movement, such as the Bath Iron Works shipbuilders who brought the hammer down in 2020.

“I grew up a labor nerd. It’s in my blood and there’s no way I was going to escape it,” she says. “But what I love is seeing Gen Z and other younger people discovering unions on their own and revitalizing the labor movement. It means more fairness and equity and that unions will be really vocal about issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s just so heartening."