Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the first week of September! 

I hope everyone enjoyed Labor Day weekend and the extra day off if you were fortunate to have one. I used the extra time off to recharge a bit and get some work done around my apartment before the upcoming Pennsylvania Supreme Court election, which will decide its makeup and determine who controls the map-making process after the 2030 census. 

(Photo: Sean Kitchen) 

Workers from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and Erie and across the commonwealth gathered on Monday to celebrate Labor Day and to fight back against President Donald Trump, the most anti-labor president in modern history.  

National labor leaders from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) rallied alongside thousands of Philadelphia workers during a Labor Day demonstration. 

Gov. Josh Shapiro promised to stand up for workers while attending Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade, saying, “If Donald Trump wants to screw with a worker here in Pennsylvania, he’s gonna have to go through me, and I got a damn good record standing up to him.” 

Speaking of Pittsburgh, newly unionized University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Magee-Womens Hospital nurses got a heroes’ welcome on Monday and led the parade through the streets of the Steel City. 

“It is such an honor to be helping to lead the Pittsburgh Labor Day Parade in our city which has ardently supported unions for 150 years and recently backed us so strongly in forming our union at Magee,” Adrienne Andrews, a six-year Magee nurse, said in a statement. 

“We are at a critical turning point and we are one of the first dominoes in a long line of medical professionals who are uniting to transform the healthcare system for the benefit of our patients, our professions and our entire region.”

You can read more about our coverage of the UPMC nurses voting to join the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Pennsylvania (SEIU HCPA) below, and look forward to our continuing coverage later on this week.

(Photo: Sean Kitchen)

State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia) trekked over 100 miles from Philadelphia to Harrisburg to raise awareness about severe service cuts and fare increases Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SETPA) riders are facing because Pennsylvania Senate Republicans failed to pass a budget that includes dedicated public transit funding. 

House Democrats passed five different funding packages that would help plug deficits for transportation agencies across the commonwealth, while Senate Republicans passed a budget that was nearly two months late and moved money from infrastructure upgrades to help cover operating costs.   

“[Pennsylvania Senate Republicans] have engaged in one of the oldest tricks in the book,” Kenyatta told reporters at a press conference in Harrisburg on Tuesday. “They have tried to divide us up. They’ve tried to divide us up by region. They have put out a lie over and over and over again that somehow rural Pennsylvania, our urban centers, our suburban communities, our ex-urban communities are locked in some blood feud.”

(Photo: AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Congratulations to Harrisburg native and National Football League (NFL) defensive superstar, Micah Parsons, for showing Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, a clinic on dealing with a delusional billionaire who is bent on breaking the rules outlined by the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA). 

Parsons took direct action by staging a “sit-in,” which means he showed up to Cowboys’ training camp and pre-season but did not participate by sitting on the sidelines the whole time, in order to force his way out of Dallas after Jones tried negotiating a contract last spring without Parsons’ agent present, a clear violation of the CBA.

Parsons was traded to the Green Bay Packers for two first round picks and a defensive player, and he received a 4-year, $188 million contract with $120 million fully guaranteed.

As always, feel free to email me at seankitchen@couriernewsroom.com if you have any tips or events that you may have interest in covering.