Kentucky Union Members Rally in Support of Steve Beshear

AFSCME members met with Steve Beshear (right) on Tuesday.

Bernard Pollack, AFL-CIO field coordinator, sends us this report on the campaign to elect a working family-friendly governor in Kentucky.

“Union members and their families will decide who is the next governor of Kentucky,” Kentucky State AFL-CIO President William Londrigan told more than 230 union members Tuesday as they packed the Machinists (IAM) Lodge 154 hall to rally in support of gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear and Daniel Mongiardo, candidate for lieutenant governor. 

“With 350,000 union members, householders, retirees and Working America members in the state of Kentucky, the labor movement will be one-quarter of all votes cast on Election Day,” Londrigan said.  

Beshear and Mongiardo won raucous applause by grabbing pens and signing a pledge to support the Employee Free Choice Act and to publicly support collective bargaining and workers’ freedom to form unions in Kentucky.  

With the candidates and IAM General Secretary-Treasurer Warren Mart at his side, Londrigan told the union activists that to win this election, they need to:

• Pass out leaflets comparing the records of Beshear and his opponent, Gov. Ernie Fletcher, at every shift change, at every worksite, in every part of the state.
• Mobilize hundreds to join the State Labor 2007 Kick-Off Walk in Louisville on Sept. 22 and to canvass neighborhoods throughout the state every Saturday thereafter.
• Fill phone banks with volunteers day and night. 

Beshear reiterated his support of key working family issues: affordable health care for all, the right to retire with dignity and the need to protect good, middle-class jobs. Recognizing how important union support is in his strategy to win, he told the crowd, “While there are lots of ways you can help me win, the most important thing you can do is what you do best: the labor movement’s member-to-member program.”

Watch the video right now and hear Steve Beshear tell union activists the importance of the labor walks, phone banking, worksite leafleting and local union mail programs.

The passionate crowd represented a diverse cross-section of the Kentucky labor movement, including members of AFGE, AFSCME, Building and Construction Trades Department, Carpenters, Communications Workers of America, Fire Fighters, IAM, Electrical Workers, Iron Workers, Laborers, Jefferson County Teachers Association-NEA, Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, UAW, United Food and Commercial Workers, United Steelworkers, Mine Workers and more.

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Paid for by AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Treasury Fund.

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