Dave Demas fears that one day soon, the federal government may strip the rights of workers at USP Canaan.
“Every day it’s a concern,” said Demas, president of American Federation of Government Employees, local 3003, which represents workers at the federal prison in Wayne County. “People forget how much we get from these contracts. How much you know your day-to-day operations, the way you bid for posts, your sick leave, your annual leave, just the safety that you get through the master agreement is a big deal.”
Demas joined dozens of local labor leaders, union members, elected officials and other supporters Monday in Scranton — in a region where union membership is nearly double the national average.
On Labor Day morning, they gathered in front of the John Mitchell statue at Lackawanna County Courthouse Square.
As president of United Mine Workers of America, Mitchell led the great anthracite coal strike of 1902, which resulted in higher wages and a shorter workday for the employees. Known as the “Champion of Labor and Defender of Human Rights,” Mitchell participated in Anthracite Coal Strike Commission hearings in the adjacent county courthouse. He is buried in Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton.
“Walk around the statue. Take a look at the whole thing. Read the inscriptions on the side,” said Bill Cockerill, AFL-CIO community service liaison. “We're still fighting for the same things.”
Before La Festa Italiana crowds arrived for pizza and porketta around the square, organizers of the annual Labor Day gathering placed a wreath at the base of the Mitchell statue.
“This is Labor Day. Unions made this day,” said Eric Schubert, president of Scranton Central Labor Council. “Thank the union for your five-day work week, overtime pay, weekends off, holiday pay, sick time … That is what we did.”
Stripping collective bargaining rights
Monday’s gathering came as President Donald Trump strips some federal unions of their collective bargaining agreements, arguing those unions pose a danger to the country.
Trump issued an executive order in March, ending collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers at about 20 agencies. Just ahead of Labor Day, Trump issued a new executive order, adding about a half dozen agencies to the list. Trump has said it hurts national security when unions are able to obstruct management.
“Issuing these executive orders just days before the holiday that honors everything working people have fought and died for — including our right to come together with our co-workers in a union and bargain for what we deserve — shows us that this administration’s callous disregard for workers’ rights knows no bounds,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement last week.
Shortly after his inauguration, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox. Wilcox's ouster left the board short of the quorum it needed to adjudicate cases. When Trump nominated two new members to the national board this summer, the AFL-CIO accused him of trying to stack the board and playing political games.
“This administration isn't too kind, but we’ve got to counter punch now,” Schubert said. “We’ve got to counter punch like we never did before. But we can't sit down and hide.”
Last week, Gov. Josh Shapiro posted the following one-sentence statement on Facebook, in favor of unions: “As long as I’m your governor, Pennsylvania will never be a right to work state.”
"Right-to-work" laws prohibit requiring employees to join or pay dues to a labor union as a condition of employment.
Labor statistics in U.S., Northeast Pennsylvania
Nationwide, the union membership rate — the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions — was 9.9% in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 1983, the first year for which comparable data is available, the union membership rate was 20.1% nationwide. In Pennsylvania, 11.7% percent of workers were union members in 2024, compared to 12.9% in 2023.
In Northeast Pennsylvania, with its rich history of industry and labor, statistics are higher. Within the metropolitan statistical area of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton, 17.7% workers are union members, according to federal data compiled by Unionstats.com.
Some of the employees stood in front of the Mitchell statue, advocating for the rights of themselves and others.
“America was built on the middle class. You didn't see any billionaire or corporation guys building the buildings here, doing the roads, protecting everybody, with the firefighters, the police,” Schubert said. “We gotta protect the middle class. This is us. The unions built the middle class just like America was built on the middle class.”
Political concerns with labor rally
Security from the Italian festival approached organizers of the annual gathering before its start, saying they didn’t have a permit and the event could not be political. The labor event started an hour before La Festa began.
Rosemary Boland, the retired president of the Scranton Federation of Teachers, told security to try to arrest her, along with the others there to stand up for workers.
“In Scranton, we are a union town, and somebody walks up to a person whose been in a union her whole entire career, and they're going to tell me or you that you can't speak here today … I asked them to show us the document,” she said during the event. “Bring it on.”
Security watched from nearby but let the event happen as planned.
