Lessons Learned From Labor
Back in his younger days, Mark Pellegrini’s father was eager to get his son to work summers at the local steel mill. It was something of a family tradition: Pellegrini’s father worked there, as did his grandfather and uncles.
Pellegrini’s father wanted his son to get the experience of mill work, but he didn’t want Pellegrini to follow in his footsteps — quite the opposite.
“My father wanted me to work in the steel mill because he wanted me to realize that ‘this is not what you want to do for the rest of your life,’” Pellegrini said. Now the director of Planning and Development for Manchester, Pellegrini’s early career was more about crossing one possibility off the list.
He spent summers as a crane follower at Jones & Laughlin Steel in Pennsylvania, hooking up bundles of steel to a crane, where it would move from floor to floor until it was loaded onto trains for shipping. Mill work is a dirty, dangerous job, he said, and his father wasn’t the only steel worker who wanted a different life for his son.
Pellegrini’s path to college and a different career was smart for another reason, too — in 1984, the steel mill closed. Lots of Pennsylvania towns suffered because of the decline of the mills, Pellegrini said, and those workers had to find new jobs.
But the steel work had at least one upside: Workers on the floor shared a camaraderie that spanned generational differences.
“Even if you have a tough job, if you’re working with good people, it’s not so bad,” he said.
That’s held true for other work in Pellegrini’s past. Prior to steel work, he was a dishwasher, busboy, and eventually a short-order cook for a diner-like restaurant. It was a 24-hour eatery, the kind of place where customers can see into the kitchen — and it kept Pellegrini closer in touch with the regulars who’d come in for breakfast or stumble in after the bars closed.
But his first job was as a janitor of sorts at his elementary school. As an 8th-grader, Pellegrini spent a summer waxing floors, moving furniture and painting walls with a crew of other guys. They worked under the chief of maintenance, a stern boss who made his instructions very clear and didn’t allow for youthful shenanigans.
That was his introduction to working life, Pellegrini said. As a kid, you’re learning for the first time that you have to show up on time, follow instructions and work as hard as the rest of the crew.
His early jobs taught him how to be a good worker, but as a grown-up, Pellegrini had to figure out the harder question of what, exactly, his career should be. He graduated with a degree in journalism, but ended up doing administrative work for county government. That was followed by a job at a township: Pellegrini was hired as a sort of community relations coordinator, but it turned out that the town needed help with planning and zoning work.
“I did not … think, ‘Gee, someday I want to be the director of planning and economic development,’” he said, but in doing the work, he found he liked it.
The job puts you in the middle of so many disciplines: architecture, urban design, community planning, regulatory issues. You have to know about housing markets, commercial development and civil engineering. Pellegrini started reading up on those topics, and eventually went to get an advanced degree. Now he oversees the action in Manchester, and still likes it for the same reasons he got into the work in the first place.
“It’s always stimulating, and it’s always different,” he said.
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