Casey visits Local 135 union hall
NORRISTOWN >> Sen. Bob Casey paid a special visit to Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 135 Tuesday to voice his support for organized labor and stoke the local get-out-the-vote effort ahead of Election Day.
Casey, who had just arrived from Pittsburgh after mourning the loss of 11 mass shooting victims at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and later attended an appeal for healing and solidarity at the Montgomery County Courthouse, came with a message of support for local unions and the right to organize, which he said is under threat by the current administration in Washington.
“One of the reasons we’re here today is because there’s a lot at stake in this election. Not just in my race for reelection, but in Gov. Wolf’s race and the races all the way down the ballot,” said Casey, in full campaign mode alongside State Senate District 24 candidate Linda Fields and Local 135 Business Manager Dan Woodall.
“There would be no American middle class without organized
labor, without unions. That is a certainty,” he continued.
“We know that, and unfortunately, because of corporate special interests, not just for years, but for decades now … union membership has declined and
that’s one of the reasons the middle class is in trouble.
“The corporate special interests that run the Republican Party are coming for the right to organize, they’re coming and they’re not kidding about it,” Casey said.
“We used to live in a state where moderate Republican politicians, governors, senators, and members of Congress had alliances, and appropriately so, with organized labor ... politicians who supported civil rights and supported the Voting Rights Act and supported health care and supported the rights of working men and women,” Casey lamented. “That’s over folks! We don’t have a state like that anymore.”
Casey cited the “Janus case” — Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 — which declared the authority of union security agreements unconstitutional, reversing a 40-year-old precedent, as one of several indicators that the Supreme Court, under its conservative majority, is moving swiftly to dismantle organized labor and other institutions that have protected the middle class.
He said conservative federal judges no longer have a chance of sitting on the high court if they don’t pass a litmus test that would put them on a short list approved by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, which has “referred to unions as cartels.”
This rightward shift of the Supreme Court, and the Republican Party in general, he argued, is also responsible for the threat to mandated insurance coverage offerings for people with preexisting conditions (due to proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the majority of Republican governors’ repudiation of Medicaid expansion), the tax bill, “that gave 83 percent of benefits to the top one percent and gave permanent corporate tax relief and jacked up the debt by $2 trillion to do it,” and the repeal of the Voting Rights Act.
Woodall thanked Casey for coming and “fighting for all of our rights, whether you’re union or nonunion, fighting for our rights for decent wages, good benefits, health care. He’s down there fighting on our behalf,” Woodall said.
His sentiments were echoed by Montgomery County Democratic Chairman Joe Foster and Fields, who spoke of her decades of advocacy and organizing and urged voters to get out to the polls on election day.
“Labor has given our families, all of us in this room, a foundation that was solid and the current administration is trying to rob us of that,” she said.
“Sen Casey and Gov. Wolf have worked diligently to save us and if it weren’t for them in office we would be in really bad shape. We must get everyone possible out to the polls on Nov. 6.”