SCRANTON – The Northern Light Espresso Bar, 536 Spruce St., was the setting of an informal discussion of Democratic state senators and labor leaders on Wednesday, giving both sides an open forum to discuss the reputedly averse affects of the Republican agenda on the working class.
Sen. Daylin Leach (D-17), head of Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, traveled from Montgomery County to meet with Sen. John Blake (D-22) and representatives of operating engineer, labor, carpentry, electrical, and bricklayer and allied craftworker unions. The committee’s goal is to regain a Democratic majority in the state senate, but also to hear the concerns of those they were elected to represent, to talk about legislative priorities for the upcoming fall session, and to build political strategies to rally support.
“We’re here meeting with labor leaders who are trying to defend the middle class in this Commonwealth. I think they are concerned about this siege on the perception of unions as greedy and as misusing resources. There’s an awful lot of rhetoric out there. Take a look at what’s going on in other states where they try to undermine the gains of labor. They’re concerned about that here,” Blake explained.
“There’s a very aggressive agenda that I think adversely affects their lives. We no longer have the luxury of saying, ‘Well, we’re only going to play in our particular neighborhood.’ We have to change the dynamics of Harrisburg statewide and we’ve got to do it in 2012,” Leach continued.
“At the end of the day, this agenda is about one thing – moving power and resources away from poor people and working people up to the top end of the economic strata.”
This Republican agenda, Leach believes, has manifested itself in anti-labor legislation, deep cuts to public education, an inequitable tax structure, obstacles that have made it more difficult for the poor to vote, and political moves such as granting the secretary of the Department of Public Welfare the “unilateral ability” to make cuts without going through the legislative process.
He feels that this is “reverse class warfare,” with Republicans favoring those who donate to their campaigns over the people’s needs.
“Do you like weekends? Do you like eight-hour work days? Do you like having bathroom and lunch breaks? Do you like having health benefits? That’s all because of labor unions in this country,” Leach said.
“People who enjoy all of those things sometimes forget on how it started and that’s it not written in some stone somewhere that that has to remain permanent. These things can be taken away, and in fact, part of the agenda is to take those things away.”
“This is about the loss of a living wage in favor of corporate profits,” Blake added.
The Senate Democratic Campaign Committee isn’t the only group of Democrats gathering support across the state to stop in the area. Last month, a state House Democratic Policy Committee hearing was held atScrantonHigh School to discuss similar issues involving Corbett’s 2011 budget cuts to education and human services.
“There a lot of folks around the state who are dedicated and committed to stopping a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing the Republicans do in Harrisburg: things we’re seeing the Corbett administration do motivated by the partisan rhetoric coming out of D.C. They’re looking for a change in Harrisburg. They expect more from their government than what they’ve been getting,” Aren Platt, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, said.
“People are angry, and they want to turn that anger into political action.”
Many of the fears Platt has heard involve future legislation that union workers believe could be devastating to employment as well as their overall movement.
“Working a union job doesn’t make you rich, but it gets you a comfortable living and it means that your boss isn’t getting rich off of your hard work. There is going to be legislation coming within the next two or three months that’s going to make it really hard for these guys to get a fair wage. Their wages are going to be cut by a quarter to a third, and their benefits are going to be cut if the legislation that’s on the table now goes through,” Platt said.
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