Recently, a Boeing apprentice named William Andrianoff offered a piece of wisdom worth repeating:
“Celebrate the bad days, because the good ones take care of themselves.”
There’s a wisdom in that line that goes beyond the jobsite. It’s the kind of clarity you only get from someone who’s learning, trying, messing up, trying again, someone who hasn’t forgotten that growth comes from friction.
And he’s right. The good days do take care of themselves. They’re easy to recognize, easy to enjoy, easy to rally around. But the bad days? Those are the ones that teach us who we are.
In the labor movement, we’re quick to celebrate our wins and we should be. A strong contract, a successful strike, a new shop organized, a grievance victory that restores dignity to someone who was wronged. These moments shine on their own. They lift spirits, build momentum, and remind us why we fight.
But if we’re honest, the moments that shape us most aren’t the easy victories. They’re the setbacks, the near‑misses, the campaigns that didn’t go the way we hoped. And maybe it’s time we start celebrating those, too, not because we enjoy losing, but because failure is where we build muscle in our strategy, our solidarity, and our unity. Successes celebrate themselves. Failures require intention.
Every organizer knows this truth: the first “no” is often the beginning of the real campaign. When a company pushes back, when a vote falls short, when a demand doesn’t make it into the final agreement, that’s when workers start to understand the scale of the fight. They see the machinery of corporate power up close. They see who stands with them and who doesn’t. And they learn that solidarity isn’t built in moments of ease, but in moments of pressure.
A setback can be the spark that turns a quiet shop into a militant one. It can turn frustration into resolve. It can turn a handful of leaders into a movement.
Ask any seasoned union leader how they learned to organize, and you’ll hear the same story: They learned by getting knocked down. They learned by trying something that didn’t work, adjusting, and trying again. They learned by watching others fail with courage and get back up with purpose.
It’s the same spirit Theodore Roosevelt captured in his famous “Man in the Arena” passage, the idea that credit belongs not to the critic on the sidelines, but to the person who steps into the fight, risks failure, and keeps going anyway. That’s the labor movement in a single image: faces marked by dust and sweat, people daring greatly in a worthy cause.
So yes, let’s celebrate the bad days. Let’s honor the campaigns that didn’t go as planned, the organizing drives that fell short, the tough lessons that forced us to grow. Those moments don’t weaken us. They prepare us.
Because every time workers get back up, every time they regroup, rethink, and return to the fight, the movement becomes stronger than it was before.
Successes celebrate themselves.
Failures build the future.
Beth Lacey is secretary-treasurer of Machinists District W24. This column appeared in the April issue of the Machinists District Lodge W24 newsletter and is reprinted for a wider union readership with permission.
