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New York – The union movement didn’t lead the Occupy Wall Street movement that began on Sept. 17 – but it didn’t take long for many union members and local unions to begin happily supporting it. Earlier this month, the head of the “house of labor,” Richard Trumka, blessed it.

During the first action in Manhattan that had significant labor support – a rally in Foley Square and a march past Zuccotti Park to Wall Street on October 5 – there were no waves of colorful matching T-shirt clad workers making their presence very obvious. But there were smaller contingents of workers from many unions, and some individual members of unions scattered throughout the large, upbeat and noisy crowd.

One week later, on October 12, 500 purple-shirted members of SEIU Local 32BJ–which represents 60,000 commercial cleaners along the East Coast from D.C. to Boston–marched into Zuccotti Park in solidarity with OWS. On Tuesday, Local 32BJ spokesman Kwame Patterson said that the march had been planned in solidarity with local members in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., whose contracts expired that week.

“Within the week leading up to Oct. 12, Occupy Wall Street gained momentum… as a grassroots movement. … Based on that, we actually worked together,” Patterson says. “We pledged support for their cause and they pledged support for us. We’re all under the same message: We believe wealth is not being shared and there is a huge economic wealth gap that needs to be addressed immediately, or there’s no longer going to be a middle class in America.”