The Lehigh Valley is watching and reading coverage about how working people are standing behind firefighter Bob Brooks’ campaign to unseat vulnerable Republican Ryan Mackenzie.
Standing at a union hall in Allentown, labor leaders threw their support behind Bob because they know he will “go out to DC and…fight for working families,” while Mackenzie “has proven he serves corporate donors and not the laborers of the Lehigh Valley.”
Watch and read more of what they’re saying about firefighter Bob Brooks:
- Several unions in the Lehigh Valley are showing their support for Democratic congressional candidate Bob Brooks.
- Reps from unions like the sheet metal workers, building trades, operating engineers and the Lehigh Valley Labor Council were there.
- Brooks is a former firefighter who wants to raise the minimum wage, ban corporate PAC money, and ban stock trading in Congress.
- Brooks: “It’s time to stand up to the corruption we are seeing in Washington. It’s time to send a message that our voice matters. Working people matter. That’s why these endorsements mean everything to me, because it comes from the people who know what a hard day’s work looks like.”
- Brooks, a 20-year retired firefighter and president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association…received the backing of the Lehigh Valley Labor Council and a unanimous endorsement from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.
- “ Bob’s one of us,” said Jim Irwin, president of the Lehigh Valley Labor Council, in an interview with The Keystone. “He’s a union member, he’s our brother, and he’s going to win. He’s going to go out to DC, and he’s going to fight for working families.”
- “ There are a lot of politicians in Washington who like to talk the talk about working people. Bob is actually one. So when he gets to Congress, he’ll be able to push for laws that will actually work for people like you and me,” Irwin said during the press conference.
- “ I’m a blue-collar guy. I literally got up and went to work for the last twenty years as a city Bethlehem firefighter, and I’ve worked for my members as a union leader for that exact time,” Brooks said in an interview. “ I work for my members, better healthcare, better wages, better working conditions, and that’s really what people want.”
- While labor leaders were heaping praise upon Brooks’ track record, they said they couldn’t help but highlight Mackenzie’s history of lining up against organized labor.
- Mackenzie was first elected to the Pennsylvania House in 2012 and became a proponent for right-to-work laws, which weaken union funding and make it harder for unions to survive, shortly thereafter.
- “ Whether it’s blocking a living wage or gutting the unemployment system, Ryan Mackenzie has proven he serves corporate donors and not the laborers of the Lehigh Valley,” Jim Reilly, vice president of the Philadelphia Building Trades and business manager with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 542, said at the press conference.
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