By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Dustin Owens doesn’t mince words when you ask him why he wants Charles Booker to unseat Kentucky’s junior senator.
“He's a hell of a lot more labor friendly than Rand Paul ever thought of being,” said Owens, a member of Paducah IBEW Local 816 and the financial secretary-treasurer of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council.
Paul, from Bowling Green, dwells on the GOP’s far right. A staunch Trump ally, he is the odds-on favorite to win a third term next Tuesday because Kentucky is one of the reddest of the Republican red states.
Nonetheless, Booker predicts he'll beat the odds and beat Paul.
No sooner did Booker win the Democratic nomination than the Kentucky State AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed him. He proved himself friend of organized labor during his one term as a state representative from Louisville, his hometown.
He has visited union halls and offered encouragement to strikers on picket lines. His Senate platform includes a stout pro-union plank:
"Charles believes in the power of organized labor to bring about the equitable economic future that Kentuckians deserve. Charles supports the rights of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain for fair employment to ensure rights are being respected. As Senator, he will fight to pass legislation like the Pro-Act to ensure that the federal government protects that right, so that the people who are producing value in our economy – workers -– are the people who benefit from our country’s economic growth.
“As a State Representative, Charles stood with organized labor to support legislation to repeal Right to Work, fight for safety standards, ensure unemployment protections, raise wages, and to reinstate prevailing wage laws for government contractors in Kentucky. Raising the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour is not radical, it is the right thing to do.”
Unions consider Paul one of the most anti-labor lawmakers in Washington. He votes the union position on legislation just 11 percent of the time, according to the AFL-CIO's Legislative Scorecard, which shows where House and Senate members stand "on issues important to working families, including strengthening Social Security and Medicare, freedom to join a union. improving workplace safety and more."
Last year, Paul reintroduced the National Right to Work Act, which Booker pledged to oppose should he win.
Owens was among several union members who attended the recent Booker-for-Senate rally in Paducah, the westernmost stop on the candidate's bus tour of the state.
"I am for Charles Booker for the same reason any union member should vote for Charles Booker," said Brian Courtney, a member of Paducah Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 184. "Sen. Paul has done nothing but union-bust the whole time he's been in office. Charles Booker is going to stand up for the middle class; he proved that as a state legislator and he'll prove it again in the Senate."
J.W. Cleary, a retired Steelworker, agreed. "Anybody who's ever been in the union would want to vote for a Democrat," said Cleary, who is also president of the Paducah-McCracken County NAACP branch.
"A union guy like me should vote for Charles Booker because we've got to preserve the rights of the workers," said Jimmie Johnson, a member of Local 184.
Julian Roberts Robinson, Teamsters Local 236, succinctly summed up why he'll cast his ballot for Booker. "He is for the union and Rand Paul is not."