The Western Kentucky Worker

Official newsletter of the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO

Prepared by Berry Craig, KEA-NEA and AFT- Kentucky

Volume 7, Number 6, June 2006

Wiggins: ‘We've still got work to do before…fall election'

Apparently, all but two Area Council-endorsed candidates won in the May 16 primary.

“But this is no time to just sit back and congratulate ourselves,” said Jeff Wiggins, council president. “We've still got work to do before the fall election.”

In the Paducah city commission race, union-backed incumbent Robert Coleman got the most votes. Gerald Watkins, also council-endorsed, finished third. “This really looks good for us in November,” Wiggins said. “But we've also got to get our other candidate, Richard Abraham, elected, too.

Abraham, a former city commissioner, finished sixth. The top eight candidates advanced to the November general election.

Other city and county council-endorsed candidates who claimed victory were County Clerk Jeff Jerrell, Jon Hayden, a candidate for sheriff; District Judge Bard Brian and County Commission candidate Jerry Beyer.

John Via, who also was endorsed by the council, failed to unseat Commissioner Ronnie Freeman. In Marshall County , “Hoppy” Hicks, the council-endorsed incumbent, also lost.

Meanwhile, Carroll Hubbard, the union-endorsed former congressman seeking to return to the state senate, had no opposition in the Democratic primary. Hubbard, a Paducah attorney, will face incumbent Bob Leeper, an independent, and Republican Neil Archer in November.

Before he was elected to Congress in 1974, Hubbard was a state senator from Mayfield. “It's important that we work hard for Carroll,” Wiggins said. “We've got a really good chance to pick up this important senate seat.”

Leeper was first elected as a Democrat, but switched to the Republicans before declaring himself an independent. “Carroll Hubbard came to our hall and told us he is against right-to-work and for the prevailing wage,” Wiggins said. “He has told us he will be our friend in Frankfort .”

Tom Barlow also visited the council and pledged to continue his support for labor should the voters return him to Congress. Barlow, a Paducah business owner, easily outdistanced two challengers, Eric Streit of Paducah and Jim Bloink of Scottsville, to win the Democratic primary.

Barlow will battle six-term incumbent Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Hopkinsville Republican, in the fall. Barlow was elected to Congress in 1992 but lost to Whitfield after one term.

“Ed Whitfield is one of the most anti-union members of Congress,” Wiggins said. “He even supported a national right-to-work law.”

Wiggins said Barlow will have a tough time beating the well-financed Whitfield. “But I sense an anti-incumbent mood among the voters,” he added. “Tom might surprise some people.”

The Area Council recommended Barlow for endorsement. But the Kentucky State AFL-CIO voted to make no recommendation because Streit was recommended by two other area councils in the First Congressional District.

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Paducah voters heeded Wiggins, Sanderson on May 16

City Commissioner Robert Coleman, the 2006 W.C. Young Award winner, promised not to talk politics.

But many did who came to praise him at the 13 th annual W.C. Young Award dinner.

“When you go out and vote, pull that lever for Robert Coleman,” said Jeff Wiggins, Area Council president. “He's our man.”

“Everybody should go out and vote for Robert Coleman,” said Larry Sanderson, business manager of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 184. “He works for us.”

More than 3,000 Paducahans cast ballots for Coleman, enough for him to finish first in the May 16 primary. He is among eight candidates who will vie for four seats on the commission in November.

The Young Award, the highest honor the Area Council bestows, is named for the late W.C. Young, a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah . Coleman received the award in April.

Sanderson won the award in 2001. “Robert Coleman works for you -- rich and poor, black and white, male and female,” he said. “We can't take a chance on losing him.”

Coleman is in his 29 th year on the city commission. He has carried a union card for more than 50 years.

A retired post office employee, Coleman said his cousin helped him get his first union job. His cousin was W.C. Young.

“Robert was my husband's special cousin,” said Carol Young, W.C. Young's widow. “Robert fights for the working men and women of our community and throughout the state. He is a man of God and a family man, and we are very proud of him.”

W.C. Young was a longtime lay leader at Washington Street Baptist Church . So is Coleman, a deacon and Trustee board chairman.

The W.C. Young Award dinner was held at the church. About 200 people gathered in the fellowship hall under a big banner proclaiming Coleman the 2006 award recipient.

Coleman talked labor history. Before unions, he said, men and women toiled long hours at low pay “in sweatshops with no kind of benefits.” Coleman added, “everything that made America good is written in blood.

“We forget to easily. If you don't know where you came from, you can't know where you're going.”

Emcee Benny Adair presented Coleman the shiny award plaque. “I am very, very grateful to receive this honor and to see all the people who came out to be part of this,” the honoree said.

Coleman said he was especially happy to see Carol Young. “”W.C. Young had a passion for working men and women not only in western Kentucky but all over the United States ,” she also said. “W.C. always told me that what is good for organized labor is good for every working man and woman.”

Besides Sanderson, two other past W.C. Young recipients spoke. They are Bill Hack of Paducah , a retired business agent of Ironworkers Local 782, and State Rep. J.R. Gray, D-Benton, a former Machinists union official.

Gray said Young and Coleman “are two of the finest people who ever walked the face of the earth. I don't know of anyone more deserving of this award than Robert Coleman.”

Hack said Young taught him “there was a right way and a wrong way and that you gain more by talking than by fighting.” He added, “Robert Coleman has served not only the citizens of Paducah but everybody in the state of Kentucky .”

He said his appreciation of Coleman is personal as well as political. Out delivering mail in a thunderstorm, Coleman rescued Hack's elderly stepmother from a rain swollen drainage ditch in front of her house in 1987. “She would have drowned without him,” Hack said. “He saved her life, and I am grateful for that.”

Coleman earned a special Post Office commendation for his lifesaving act.

Wiggins said Coleman also carried mail to his house. “When he came to the mail box, we would have conversations about labor. He has always stood for working families.

“Robert is the only one is standing up for us at city hall. He needs a lot of help, and we need to give it to him.”

Wiggins meant Gerald Watkins and Richard Abraham, union-endorsed candidates for the city commission. Watkins, a political science professor at West Kentucky Community and Technical College , praised Coleman. Watkins finished third in the May 16 balloting, ahead of every incumbent except Coleman.

Bill Londrigan, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president, came from Louisville to congratulate Coleman. “The first time I had the opportunity to hear Robert Coleman was at the unveiling of the floodwall [mural in 2004],” Londrigan said. “I knew right away that this gentleman was a person who cared deeply about working families and a person devoted to the principles of the union movement.”

Others who lauded Coleman included Paducah Mayor Bill Paxton, McCracken County Judge-Executive Danny Orazine, Carroll Hubbard, a former congressman and a candidate for the state senate; John Via, a candidate for the county commission; David Mast from U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield's office, Bruce Brockenborough, candidate for the state house of representatives; Rick Johnson, candidate for the state supreme court; Van Newberry, candidate for McCracken County judge-executive, Ronnie Freeman and Bob Grimm, candidates for McCracken County commission, Eric Streit and Tom Barlow, candidates for congress; Shea Nickell, candidate for the state court of appeals judge; Roschnell Brown and Lester Williams.

Connie Coleman, the honoree's wife, also spoke.

Born in Hopkinsville , Coleman moved to Paducah with his family when he was 5-years-old. He graduated from Lincoln High School in 1950 and served in the Air Force during the Korean War.

After attending Paducah Junior College , Coleman joined the post office in 1961. He became active in the union and served as chairman of the Executive Board of the Kentucky Association of Letter Carriers, an AFL-CIO affiliate.

Also a member of the Paducah Branch of the NAACP and the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame, Coleman was first elected to the city commission in 1973. He has served two terms as mayor pro-tem.

Before the dinner, there was a brief Workers Memorial Day Service led by Wiggins. Berry Craig, a professor of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College and the council newsletter editor, gave a brief talk emphasizing labor pioneer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones' admonition, “Mourn for the dead, fight for the living!,” the unofficial motto of Workers Memorial Day, which is celebrated nationally every April 28.

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Brockenborough repeats pro-union positions

Bruce Brockenborough, the Republican candidate for the state house of representatives from Paducah , sent a letter to Jeff Wiggins, Area Council president, repeating his opposition to a right-to-work law and support for the prevailing wage law.

“ It is the state's responsibility to promote high wages in both public and private sectors,” he wrote. “In other words, I support prevailing wage laws and would, as your legislator, work to protect, strengthen and vigorously fight any opposition to, or weakening of them.

Brockenborough, a city business owner, faces incumbent Democrat Frank Rasche in the November general election. The council voted no recommendation in the race. The state AFL-CIO supported the council.

Brockenborough has actively courted labor. He attended the February rally in support of the prevailing wage at the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 184 union hall in Paducah . He came to the March council meeting and said he was against a right-to-work law and favored the prevailing wage.

Brockenborough attended the W.C. Young Award dinner in April.

In his letter to Wiggins, Brockenborough also wrote, “ The Governor's ‘right to work' agenda is bad policy. There is no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that suggests that potential employers forego Kentucky in favor of right to work states. If that evidence were to exist, it would still be bad policy to pursue employers who seek to compete based on low wages, versus high value jobs.”

Brockenborough also said, “ I support organized labor and will not support any right to work initiative. I unequivocally support every employee's right to organize. This is a basic human right, supported by our Constitution and guaranteed by our democratic principles. To deny any citizen this opportunity is offensive; to deny a government employee this right is an affront to the very tenets on which our country was founded. I am on record as having consistent and thorough support for organized labor and its issues. As your State Representative, I would look forward to leading labor's agenda in Paducah and Frankfort . With your support, I hope to support organized labor as a tradition and way of life throughout The Commonwealth.”

Rasche also attended the February rally at the Local 184 hall. But he is not considered to be consistently pro-labor, Wiggins said. “I also can't remember the last time he came to a council meeting,” the president added.

But Rasche contributes to the pro-labor Democratic majority in the state house, said delegate Bob Delaney. “If the Republicans win the house, J.R. Gray is no longer chairman of the Labor and Industry Committee and we get a right-to-work law,” Wiggins said. “The house is all that's standing between us and a right-to-work law and the repeal of the prevailing wage law.”

Wiggins added, “Even though this guy [Brockenborough] is saying what he's saying, we still need to keep Democrats in control of the House. We need to take control of the Senate and when Ernie's time is up; we need to take back the governor's mansion.”

State Rep. J.R. Gray, D-Benton, agreed that there are some pro-union Republicans in the state house, including some on his committee. “ I can't just give a strong indictment against all Republicans, but we do have to be careful about the ones we get,” he said.

Gray said Rasche has told him “on numerous occasions” that he was “not for right-to-work.” Gray added that Rasche has said he might support “a little tweaking on prevailing wage” but would oppose repealing the law.

Gray agreed with Delaney, too. “Any time we get another Republican up there, we are asking for problems in general.”

On other topics, Gray thanked the Western Kentucky Labor Day Committee for naming him grand marshal for the 2006 Labor Day parade. Gray said after receiving the W.C. Young Award, the highest honor the Area Council bestows, four years ago, “being grand marshal is the icing on the cake.”

He also explained to delegates that he called for a committee vote on right-to-work and prevailing wage to forestall a possible move to bring the two bills to the house floor for a vote. “It's called a discharge petition,” Gray said.

Had supporters of right-to-work and opponents of the prevailing wage collected 25 signatures on the petition, the plan might have worked, Gray said. “Discharge petitions have not been very successful, but they have stirred up a lot of trouble from time to time.”

Gray said he brought right-to-work and prevailing wage to a vote only after carefully polling his committee. He said when he “was totally comfortable” that a majority would oppose right-to-work and support the prevailing wage he “reported back to our labor people and the house leadership” that he was scheduling a vote. It came on the day of the big union rally in Frankfort in support of the prevailing wage and against right-to-work.

The Labor and Industry Committee voted 11-3 to defeat the right-to-work bill and 11-2 against repealing the state minimum wage law, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

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The next Area Council newsletter will appear in August

There will be no July newsletter. Berry Craig, the newsletter editor, will be on vacation. The newsletter will resume in August.

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Got news? Email it to Berry Craig at bcraig8960@charter.net or Jeff Wiggins at JLWiggins2@Juno.com.

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