The Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, first and foremost, is an institution of the labor movement. The Center was established in 1992 following a grassroots fundraising effort led by members and friends of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Each year, in recognition of that history, the Bridges Center honors a community advocate with the Robert Duggan Distinguished Supporter of Labor Studies Award, an honor named for the labor lawyer and former longshore worker who led the effort to found the Center.

This year’s recipient is Mary Fosse, a representative in the Washington State legislature (38th District, Everett, Marysville, Tulalip) and a passionate fighter for the working class. Since joining the Center’s Visiting Committee in 2024, Fosse has regularly advised the Center on policy research and spoken to students at the University of Washington. Thanks to Fosse’s ongoing advocacy in the legislature, the Harry Bridges Center has remained funded and sustainable. Fosse’s support has ensured that Labor Studies at the University of Washington remains an asset to the labor movement. 

Fosse witnessed the power of a union firsthand as a child, attending her first picketline with her mother as a nine-month old infant. Growing up poor with a single mother, sometimes homeless, Fosse gained a strong sense of justice and appreciation for the power of collective action. Alarmed by the election of Donald Trump in 2020, and concerned with the disenfranchisement of her community in Everett, WA, Fosse organized a grassroots neighborhood association to bring childcare, cultural events, and resources to her neighborhood, including $5.5 million for an environmental justice clean-up project. Encouraged by her neighbors, Fosse won election to the Everett City Council in 2021. 

Fosse’s passion for the labor movement was renewed while working as a legislative aide in the state House. There she recognized the centrality of workers’ rights to a wide range of policy issues, and advocated for her own rights alongside her fellow state employees. Since being elected to the state legislature in 2022, Fosse’s many accomplishments have focused on rights, protections and opportunities for families, workers, youth, and the most vulnerable. Two of her proudest include legislation strengthening protections for working minors, and establishing pathways to the building trades for incarcerated people.

Labor Studies, Fosse believes, is fundamental to any education. “In our time of great income inequality and political imbalances,” she says, “it is critical that we know our history, how the working class has struggled, and how progress has been achieved through solidarity and collective action.” She takes particular inspiration from young people and their willingness to fight for what is right, keeping people in power accountable. She views the work of the Bridges Center, producing research and educating new generations of organizers, as a critical complement to her work as a policymaker. 

Fosse is a proud dues paying member of the Washington State Federation of State Employees and an honorary member of Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 66. When she is not enacting policy or walking a picketline in solidarity, Fosse is a working mother and an avid gardener and plant lover (she once owned and operated a carnivorous plant nursery).