Growing up in Lewiston, my family lived mostly paycheck-to-paycheck. It was my mom’s union membership that allowed our family to have health insurance when the church my dad served could no longer afford to provide it for our family.
I worked construction and worked many jobs through high school and college, including in the Bates College cafeteria. Mainers are hard workers. Workers deserve the right to organize and band together to ensure they get the respect and benefits they deserve. To me these include being able to make enough money to afford a house, healthcare, child care and to have a little breathing room for a rainy day and retire with dignity. In Congress, I will be a champion for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to hold businesses accountable for violating worker’s rights and give more folks the chance to join a union to make those things possible for more Mainers.
Mainers have a proud tradition of building ships that keep us safe and power our economy, that’s why I’ll always fight to protect our shipyards and to make sure that the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage is adhered to and remains the law of the land.
I believe that no one who is working full time should live in poverty. The federal minimum wage has not been raised since I was in college. I support raising the federal minimum wage to match Maine’s minimum wage: $15 an hour.
Maine workers are the backbone of our state and everything that powers it. As your Congressman, I’ll always have Maine workers’ backs.