Issue Position: Labor

Issue Position

With stagnant wages, growing income inequality and stubbornly high unemployment rates, the American worker is under siege.

We need to ask ourselves, have tax cuts for the wealthy really created anything for workers?

In a legal career in which I fought high-profile workplace discrimination cases on behalf of women, veterans and the handicapped, my record on labor rights should be clear: I will resist any attempt to strip workers of the right to bargain, obtain a living wage or be protected from harm or harassment in the workplace.

My recent legislative record on workers' rights includes votes:
* against barring child care providers -- 98% of them women -- from unionizing.
* against eliminating the right to unionize at a Maine egg farm notorious for labor complaints.
* against a measure that flattens state income taxes, with 75% of the benefit to the top 20% of taxpayers and middle-class families forced to make up a $600 million annual shortfall.
* to raise Maine's minimum hourly wage to $7.75 and then $8.
* to resist letting minors work longer while in school, at 30 percent lower wage than the legal minimum.

When elected, I will continue my support of Maine's working people by co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act requiring employers to honor workers' decision to join a union. I also will vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act, reversing the vote of the current delegation, to close the gender pay gap for American families who increasingly rely on the incomes of women.

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