“We don’t need just any jobs, we need good jobs that build up the same middle class that built up America.”
SOUTH BALTIMORE – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) today joined members from a wide range of Baltimore’s top labor unions for a conversation on the many issues affecting Maryland workers. Speaking with a crowd of about 50 total local, state and federal union representatives, Senator Cardin discussed a diversity of issues that included improving educational affordability, continuing postal reliability, enhancing the Affordable Care Act, providing sensible reforms to the tax code, negotiating strong and transparent international trade agreements, and upgrading our transportation and water delivery infrastructures.
“We too often think of things as only being an environmental issue, or a tax issue, or a health care issue. In truth, we can address those issues, but also can often do more to help the American worker,” Senator Cardin said. “Beneath the surface of many of these issues is the chance to grow the economy and create new jobs.”
“We simply don’t have enough jobs in this country. We don’t need just any jobs, we need good jobs that build up the same middle class that built up America,” Senator Cardin noted. “Unions helped provide millions of Americans with a living wage, safe working conditions and a better life. But today, the middle class is shrinking, income inequality is growing and a living wage is too hard to find for too many people. We can do much better.”
Many of the concerns voiced by union representatives focused on ensuring that federal employees and facilities continued receiving adequate levels of support. “Whether we’re talking about maintaining adequate postal processing facilities in Maryland to ensure prompt mail delivery; or staffing at the Social Security Administration so that the most vulnerable among us can continue to get support from real, live human beings when they need it; I’m committed to making sure that the federal budget serves Maryland as well as it possibly can,” Senator Cardin said.
Senator Cardin was hosted and introduced at today’s roundtable by Ernest Grecco, President of the Metropolitan Baltimore Council of AFL-CIO Unions. “Here in Maryland we have the two best senators in terms of labor issues,” Grecco said. “I’ll put their voting records up against the senators from any other state in the nation.”
