Labor-Endorsed Gubernatorial Candidate Troy Jackson Receives Warm Welcome at Labor Summer Institute
PHOTO: Troy Jackson marching with Ina Demers (MEA/APRI) in support of UMaine Graduate Workers on Aug. 13.
Maine gubernatorial candidate and union brother Troy Jackson received a warm welcome at Labor Summer Institute at the University of Maine in Orono last week. In introducing the former Senate President, Maine AFL-CIO Vice President Grant Provost described how Troy’s struggles working for exploitative timber companies in the North Woods inspired him to join the labor movement and fight for workers in the Maine Legislature.
“Troy quickly learned that the barrier to his family's success wasn't the unavailability to work another 16 hour shift, that there wasn't 28 hours in a day, nor were there 8 days in a week,” said Provost. “It was the blatant greed of those that held the purse strings, the ones who never put in the time or the hard work. It comes as no surprise, the man we all love and respect set off to do something about that.”
Jackson told the audience about growing up in a poor community where everyone struggled financially and many were dependent on public relief and unemployment checks to get by. He talked about how these financial struggles led to the collapse of his parents’ marriage as they were always fighting over money. Jackson recalled the day his father took him to a logging strike as a child. The loggers had organized to fight back against a pay cut as mechanical timber harvesting had been introduced to the industry.
“I didn't understand that but when the landowner came there and…he just got out and said, ‘Go back to work for what I'm paying you or I'll replace you all with Canadians.”
That was Jackson’s first experience seeing how the bosses pit workers against each other. Canadians are great people and work hard, he said, but because of the currency exchange rates and the fact that the companies didn’t have to pay health care (because Canadians have a national health care system) or workers’ compensation it was cheaper for the companies to hire Canadian workers. Jackson remembered looking around to see what happened next. The loggers were furious, but they knew their only option was to go back to work or face unemployment.
“Within no time the strike ended because there was no negotiation,” said Jackson. “And that was my first labor negotiation — do it or go home. But it was not my last!”
When Jackson became an adult, he found himself in the same position as his father before him — working ungodly hours and struggling to get by on what the timber companies paid.
“My dad didn't want me to go to work in the woods, but I did because I was dumb and naive and headstrong,” said Jackson. “Pretty soon I found myself in that same position: do it or go home.”
He started working in remote logging camps five hours from home away from his family in a time before cell phones. Like his parents, he and his wife began arguing over finances, leading eventually to their divorce.
“I'd be gone all week and I didn't know what was going on with my wife and kids, which was hard,” Jackson said. “Sundays were the worst because I knew all day long I'd have to pack my stuff and leave at midnight and I was mad. But that is the challenge that obviously a lot of us have. And it's not just the money, it's the time that you never get back. I probably could have justified the work if I was making money, but I wasn't making money and I was still losing the time.”
But he had a lot of time to think on those five-hour commutes down the Golden Road. One day while he was driving to work he began thinking about how his dad must have felt during that strike many years earlier, standing before a company man who had so much power over his family’s lives. He thought about how it must have felt to be his father with his son beside him “losing that pride, that self-respect, that you can't say anything.”
“And it just hit me that there's got to be a different way in this country for everyday working class people to not have to lose your sense of pride, your sense of self-respect,” said Jackson. “And that was when I started thinking that we could change the system.”
After taking part in the 1998 border blockade to call attention to the mistreatment of Maine loggers, Jackson ran for the legislature, first unsuccessfully as a Republican and then successfully as an independent. Later on he became a Democrat, but he never wavered from his laser focus on improving the lives of working families like his own. He said his campaign for Governor is focused on taking on Big Pharma to lower the cost of prescription drugs, lowering property taxes, making housing and child care affordable, saving nursing homes and protecting reproductive rights.
Jackson noted that many working class people in Maine have left the Democratic Party because it is not as strongly focused on their economic interests. He believes he can win some of those people back by putting kitchen table issues at the forefront of his campaign. In his last election for Senate Jackson handily won his increasingly conservative leaning northern Maine Senate district. The same election President Donald Trump won Jackson's district by double digits.
“I can be that person who can give us that self respect, that sense of having somebody in our corner because we have not had that ever in the Blaine House,” said Jackson. “If you like government the way it is right now, vote for one of the other ones because I don’t think it's working for everyday working class people. I think that we can change the status quo. And I think we have to.”
Do you support Troy Jackson for Governor? Let us know: https://maineaflcio.org/troy
Support Troy at the following upcoming events:
Sunday, August 24
Franklin County Dems Potluck
Friday, August 29
A Night for Working Mainers, 6-8pm
Belmont (email us for more information)
Saturday August 30th
Owls Head Town Hall from 5-7
September 1
Southern Maine Labor Day Breakfast | 7 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Eastern Maine Labor Day Cookout | 4:30 p.m. to 7