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Ensuring Livable Wages, Strong Democratic
Unions, Workplace Fairness and
Economic Prosperity for All
I am the product of several generations of union members and organizers, and I believe with all of my heart in the organizing principle of the labor movement: solidarity with other people. My paternal grandfather was a plumber and he and his brothers and sisters were all union people. My mother, the late novelist Barbara Raskin, was the founding President of the National Writers Union, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers.
I have been deeply involved in promoting the right to organize a union and the right to collective bargaining. In 2000 Governor Glendening named me the founding Chairman of Maryland’s Higher Education Labor Relations Board. In the first six months of my chairmanship, we wrote a comprehensive and progressive labor law regime for the state’s university and college campuses, including rules related to employee free speech, union organizing, employer interference and intimidation, representation elections, collective bargaining and decertification. In the five years of my chairmanship of this Board, we conducted dozens of free and fair elections and more than 7,000 lower-wage workers in Maryland—most of them dining hall employees, cleaning staff, janitors, secretaries, clerks, library assistants, and security officers—joined unions are now in collective bargaining relationships. Our Board and its regulatory regime are now a national model for states extending organizing rights to college campuses.
I hope to be a strong voice and mind in the State Senate for all working people. The union movement needs political leaders who understand that the progressive agenda is not a discrete set of special-interest items but a whole way of approaching the legislative process with an eye towards greater participation and prosperity for working people.
As your State Senator from District 20, I will fight for:
- Raises in the state minimum wage law to $7 per hour in 2008, $7.50 an hour in 2009 and indexing for inflation beyond.
- Living wage legislation for state contractors so the public is not implicated in shameful wages and employment practices.
- An end to offshore sub-contracting and outsourcing by state contractors and a reduction in privatizing state services, which undermines the participatory involvement and professional success of state employees.
- A ban on closed-door “captive audience” speeches where employers force employees to submit to political propaganda meetings. Neither unions nor employers should have the right to compel employees to attend mandatory indoctrination sessions.
- Universal health care coverage so the modest gains of labor are not immediately consumed by health insurance plans.
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"The Race to Watch"