CHRISTINE ROBINSON Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Tuesday, September 2, 2008 12:00 am
Wyoming's economy is strong, but not everyone at Monday's Labor Day picnic was resting easy with the November election looming.
"I'd like to see decisions and policies that are made with working people in mind," said Craig Thomas, of Iron Workers Local 454 and president of the Casper Building and Trades Council.
Casper and Wyoming haven't felt the national recession the way other states have, he said, and with a change in leadership, he hopes that the state won't ever have to suffer to the same degree.
He became an iron worker as a young man because he thought it would be a way to live self-sufficiently and "retire with dignity." At 53 years old, he thinks he will be able to retire with the dignity he hoped for and credits the unions for that security.
It's because of union workers that hundreds were able to gather at the Iron Workers Local 454 office on Monday, said Mary Ellen Renz, a representative for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. The picnic, sponsored by the Casper Area Trades and Labor Assembly and the Casper Building and Trades Council, was supposed to be in City Park but moved to the Iron Workers building because of rain.
Waiving her arms around a room full of retired, current and future workers, Renz said, "We forget these are the people that are collecting the pensions and that did the right thing so long ago."
It's people like H. Paul Johnson, she said.
Johnson joined the local carpenters union in Anchorage in 1952 and moved to Casper in 1955.
He started work on the Glendo Dam and in 1956 worked on the Dave Johnston Power Plant.
During the next several decades he oversaw dozens of strikes, moved to Portland, Ore., to be vice president of the International Carpenters Union and was president of the Wyoming AFL-CIO.
He worries, after 56 years as a member of the Carpenters Union, that while there's plenty of work in Wyoming, not enough of it is going to union workers.
"I'd like to go back to what we had," he said. "But what I can say is, what the unions did for us and what we did for the unions, I wouldn't have it any other way."
Casper's picnic was Gary Trauner's third Labor Day event of the day and scores of people mingled in the banquet room waiting to talk with him about his policies and his candidacy.
It's the working people that matter in a state like Wyoming, and in the country, said the Democratic candidate for Wyoming's loan seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"My wife's father is a 57-year member of the Iron Workers," he said. "I've seen what it's done for his family."
What's important, Trauner said, is for people to be able to earn equal pay for equal work, have access to quality health care and be assured they will have the financial ability to retire.
Wearing a green Trauner campaign sticker, Thomas said it's that kind of change that he and other workers are hoping to see in the upcoming election.
Contact city reporter Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or christine.robinson@trib.com.