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The Western Kentucky Worker | |
Official newsletter of the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO
Prepared by Berry Craig, KEA-NEA and AFT- Kentucky
Volume 8, Number 5, May, 2007
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| Stirring Words Jeff Wiggins, council president, reads the inscription on the state Workers' Memorial which was to be dedicated April 28, Workers Memorial Day. |
Lewis Hicks is ‘looking down with pride from heaven'
Three flat tires couldn't stay Benny Adair and Hardy Williams from their appointed rounds.
Adair, council vice president, and Williams, recording secretary, volunteered to go to Frankfort and bring the state Workers' Memorial to the council. “They made it, but it wasn't easy,” said Jeff Wiggins, council president.
The gray stone shaft, about 10-feet-tall, is in place on the council hall lawn. It was to be dedicated April 28, which the AFL-CIO and other labor groups observe as Workers' Memorial Day.
Speakers were to include Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO; Bob Reynolds, the 2007 W.C. Young Award recipient, and Berry Craig, council sergeant-at-arms and newsletter editor. Refreshments were to follow.
The annual W.C. Young Award dinner also was set for April 28.
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Jeff Wiggins, council president, admires the Workers' Memorial, which arrived in Paducah despite tire trouble. (Photo by Berry Craig) |
The featured speaker was to be R. Thomas Buffenbarger, international president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. “We are glad to have a union leader of Mr. Buffenbarger's stature join us,” Wiggins said. “I think this underlines just how important the W.C. Young Award is.”
Reynolds is retired IAMAW District 19, Railroad Division, president and directing general chairman. He began his career in the union at the old Illinois Central Railroad shops in Paducah . He lives on a farm near Sharpe.
Young was a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah . He earned the first W.C. Young Award in 1994, two years before he died. Last year's winner was Young's cousin, Robert Coleman, a longtime city commissioner and union member.
Wiggins said Lewis Hicks, who received the 2005 W.C. Young Award, “really wanted to see that monument to Paducah . I know he is looking down with pride from heaven and seeing it.”
Hicks, a Steelworker, died last year. He was the council COPE director, a council trustee and mayor of La Center.
For several years, the monument was at the old state AFL-CIO headquarters in Frankfort . It was flanked by two benches donated by the state Firefighters' union organization and the Kentucky Safety and Health Network.
When the state AFL-CIO sold the headquarters building, the council asked for the monument. “Benny and Hardy said they'd go get it,” Wiggins said.
Crane operators from Operating Engineers' Union Local 181 loaded and unloaded the 12,000-pound monument. “I'd like to thank Michael Vinson and Lube Beadles from Local 181,” Wiggins said. In Paducah, the operator was Nickie E. Boulton; NES Rentals furnished the crane.
Adair, who provided a one-ton pickup truck and a trailer, is president of the Kentucky State Council of Machinists and directing business representative for Machinists District Lodge 154. Williams is a retired Machinist.
The trailer blew tires east and west of Elizabethtown and near Princeton . The council voted to pay for replacing the tires, for gas and for food for Adair and Williams. “We still came out ahead,” said Wiggins, who added that professionals would have charged around $3,000 for the move.
Wiggins added, “We already had $300 from the Afghan Mary Hicks, Lewis' wife, made and raffled off. The crane rental was $465 and the state fed agreed to pay for half of that. The Paducah gaseous diffusion plant donated $1,000, so counting the whole cost of the move, it was about a wash.”
The monument is next to the I-24 Business Loop and close to the Area Council sign. “I'd like to put a rock garden around it and maybe some flowers and shrubs,” Wiggins said. “It's a work in progress.” Delegates voted to spend up to $500 for sprucing up the area around the monument.
Meanwhile, Wiggins urged delegates to read the inscription in the stone. It says, “This memorial will not mark the final resting place of an individual or group of people. It is the symbol of devotion and a tangible expression of outrage at the needless loss of Kentucky workers who died in pursuit of the American dream.
“This monument was erected as a permanent memorial to those who have paid the ultimate price of inadequate occupational health and safety laws. It also serves to remind us of the work that remains for us to accomplish on behalf of the living.
This monument expresses the love, care and concern between union brothers and sisters, our shared love of freedom, dignity and purpose….”
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Delegates were few at the April council meeting
The council executive board failed to meet in April because there weren't enough officers to muster a quorum. Attendance at the regular meeting was light, too. “A lot of people were working,” said Jeff Wiggins, council president. “I don't know where everybody else was. But if this council is to succeed, we've got to have more participation.” Business included a report by Wiggins and by delegate
Howard “Bubba” Dawes on the state AFL-CIO COPE Committee's decision not to make an endorsement in the governor's race. All of the Democratic candidates received “no recommendation” votes, except Bruce Lunsford. The committee voted “no endorsement” for him and for the three Republicans in the race.
In other business, Frances Willey reported on the 2007 Labor Day program. Willey said she has begun the permit process with the city. She also said that money from the traditional $5 ads “is coming in slow but looks a little better than last year.” The money raised from the small ads helps pay for major media advertising, such as in the Paducah Sun .
Also, the council swore in two new delegates – David Burnett of AFSCME Local 2821 and Nathan Torian of the Paducah Firefighters Union. Torian also was elected a council trustee in February.
In addition, Wiggins received an Activist Recognition Award from UNITE HERE! for his work with AIM-UNITE! Chapter 22, a local union retirees' group. “The Activist Recognition Award recognizes current and retired UNITE HERE workers who go above and beyond the call of duty in standing up for workers' rights,” read a letter from Lina M. Bracero, UNITE HERE! Retired Action Program administrator. “…. Your efforts have made a difference.”
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‘No Blank Check for China ' This year's W.C. Young Award recipient Bob Reynolds, front row, third from the left in a white baseball cap, was among 125 union members and their families who lit candles and prayed outside Congressman Ed Whitfield's office in Paducah on the night of May 23, 2000, in hopes he would vote against granting China permanent normal trade relations. Whitfield, R- Hopkinsville, voted for the bill the next day. (Photo by Berry Craig) |
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Got news? Email it to Berry Craig at bcraig8960@newwavecomm.net or Jeff Wiggins at JLWiggins2@Juno.com.