second largest city in New England. As Secretary-Treasurer of the strongest union organization in the region as well as a member of its influential Committee on Political Education (COPE), one of
organized labor’s more effective entities to support favored candidates, Loughlin was in a position to make his point. In the back-room dealings behind the choice of Worcester, Loughlin was never “the player,” his son explained, but he was “a player.”
Unlike Hugh Thompson, and perhaps contributing to some coolness between them, Loughlin
got his start in union work with the AFL, not the CIO. Born in Worcester on October 28, 1910, Loughlin attended Worcester schools. He left St. Peter’s High School in 1926 to work as a
carpet weaver’s apprentice at the Whittall Mills to help support his family. He left Whittall Mills when he realized he could double his wages by working for the Works Progress Administration (more commonly known as the WPA) as a tree surgeon. Loughlin was introduced to organized labor when, after taking a job with Brockets Brewery in 1934, the brewery was unionized. He
was elected vice-president of the local AFL Brewery Workers Union in 1937. Following World War II (Loughlin enlisted in the Navy in 1942), he became a bartender at the Coronado Hotel in Worcester. This secured his ties to the local bartender’s union and in 1948 he was elected
Secretary-Treasurer and Business Agent for the union. He served as President and Executive
Board Member of the Massachusetts State Council of the Hotel, Restaurant and Bartenders Union and was the first Vice President of the Worcester Central Labor Union. In February 1962, seven years after the merger of the AFL and the CIO, Loughlin was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Massachusetts Labor Council of the AFL-CIO, a full-time position located on Boston’s Beacon
Hill, until his retirement in 1979. Loughlin moved his family to Framingham, a town located about halfway between Worcester and Boston, after he began representing union members from the entire state. By all accounts, Loughlin never lost his sense of loyalty to Worcester.
His career propelled him toward statewide office just as the new school’s location was being
considered. And, like Conte, Loughlin was committed to his hometown. During the late 1950s and 1960s, as mentioned earlier, many large employers were leaving the Worcester area. Loughlin
and other labor leaders looked to a new state campus not only for construction jobs, but for the long-term benefits it could bring. His daughter remembers his telling some of the school’s first leaders, “Some day you could be the largest employer in Worcester!” And after all, as he and
Worcester’s other supporters all felt, Amherst already had the University’s main campus, while
Boston had just been “given” a branch campus of the University. Now it was Worcester’s turn. If Hugh Thompson turned to Worcester as a second-best alternative to Boston, Jimmie Loughlin
never saw Worcester as a compromise. Worcester was always his first choice. And as an influential member of COPE, with control of the campaign workers and funds to assist likeminded political 72