Good afternoon everyone.

It’s Tuesday, July 28, and welcome back to another edition of the Keystone Labor Report. You can find Thursday’s edition here.

With less than 100 days to go until Election Day, , I will be focusing on covering the important races happening here in Pennsylvania over the next couple of months.

Feel free to drop me a line at seankitchen@couriernewsroom.com for any tips, pitches, or what to keep an eye out for in the coming weeks.

Sean Kitchen

Political Correspondent, The Keystone

(Facebook: SEIU Healthcare Pa)

More than 900 healthcare workers at Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College walked off the job on Monday to stage a five-day strike after their contract expired at the beginning of this month.

The Mount Nittany workers, which includes registered nurses, emergency department technicians, lab technicians, skilled maintenance, phlebotomists, certified nurse aides, environmental services aides, radiology technologists, nutrition workers, and others, are represented by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and are fighting for higher wages.

“Mount Nittany has really left us with no choice but to strike,” Fawn Guignet, a 10-year Mount Nittany Medical Center Emergency Room nurse, said in a statement.

“Quality patient care depends on dedicated workers from wall to wall – staff who disinfect rooms, fix broken equipment, prepare meals, take accurate lab tests and scans for diagnosis, transport patients, begin chest compressions, and more. But instead of valuing the people who make care possible, Mount Nittany executives are offering increases that don’t keep up with rising costs or inflation.”

READ more about the strike here

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

Democrats rallied around retired firefighter Bob Brooks this past weekend and union members across the Lehigh Valley are excited about potentially sending Brooks to Washington, DC.

Brooks was joined by US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) at the United Steelworkers Union Hall in Bethlehem on Sunday to launch the House Democrats’ affordability agenda going into Election Day.

“ It would be great to have someone like me in Congress. I could say, ‘He’s pro-union.’ You can’t say that about all of them,” said Tammy McCoy, a Bethlehem School District cafeteria worker and member of the Pennsylvania Joint Board of United Workers in an interview with The Keystone.

READ more about Sunday’s event here

Allegheny County is looking to become the first county in the country that requires employers to provide up to 18 weeks of paid family leave for employees who have or adopt a child. You can find a detailed explanation of the proposal from Pittsburgh’s Public Source here.
US Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) was caught trading data center supplier stocks while pushing for the expansion of data centers, per Politico.
Nearly two-thirds of Pennsylvanians support taxing billionaires, wealthy corporations, and Big Tech companies, according to a poll conducted by RealClear Opinion Research.

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

While labor unions rally behind Brooks, one topic that has been getting some attention recently is how unions are splitting their endorsements between Bresnahan and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti (D).

Bresnahan has received the support of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal government employees union, the Pennsylvania Laborers District Council, and other building trade unions while Cognetti has received the support of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, SEIU PA State Council, and the Communications Workers of America to name a few.

Last week, Cognetti secured the backing from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, which represents over 700,000 workers across the commonwealth.

“We are proud to support Paige Cognetti in her campaign for Congress. This endorsement is a vote of confidence and a recognition that she understands what matters to Pennsylvania’s working families,” said Angela Ferritto, President of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, in a statement on Thursday.