By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Bill Londrigan, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president, always corrected state Sen. C.B. Embry Jr., R-Morgantown, when he’d bring up his 100 percent pro-labor voting record.
“I told him on several occasions, ‘C.B., you do not have a 100 percent record," Londrigan explained. "You have a 110 percent voting record because of all the pressure and browbeating that you got from your party during all those years.”
Shortly after he officially resigned his seat last month, the western Kentucky lawmaker lost his long battle with cancer. Embry was 81.
During this year's legislative session, Embry announced that he was stepping down because of his illness. Before he was elected to the senate in 2014, he was a state representative, judge-executive and mayor.
UMWA international District 12 Vice President Steve Earle echoed Londrigan. "I don't know of anybody elected to public office that has been truer to organized labor than C.B. Embry. He has been a friend of the United Mine Workers from the very beginning of his political career."
Earle recalled Embry telling him, "Steve, [the GOP House and Senate leadership]...has browbeaten me to no end. But I will never, ever go back on my word to organized labor and to my friends in the United Mine Workers. I have told people in Republican leadership that I'll never forget who put me here, and I'm going to stay true to my word to organized labor."
After the Republicans flipped the state House of Representatives in November, 2016, the GOP-majority House and Senate, urged by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, lost no time in passing a "right to work" law and repealing the prevailing wage in the 2017 General Assembly session. Embry was one of only a handful of Senate Republicans who broke ranks and joined the minority Democrats and opposing both bills, which Bevin eagerly signed.
Organized labor presented a special lapel pin--a pair of tiny brass boots--to lawmakers who fought against the two antiunion measures.
Embry got one. "CB wore it with great pride as a symbol of his undying support for working people," Londrigan recalled.
In addition, Embry's name appeared on USW District 8's "Wall of Fame" banner that listed of all the lawmakers who voted against RTW and PW repeal. Nearly every other GOP legislator was listed on the "Wall of Shame" side of the banner because they voted for the legislation.
"CB was one of a kind, he never wavered in his support for us," Londrigan said. "He will be missed."