Steve Kelly, a tall man wearing a purple hooded sweatshirt, stood at a small podium in Downtown’s Mellon Square Park on Tuesday morning and talked about the importance of his union, SEIU 32BJ. Its members keep Pittsburgh and its offices clean. In Kelly’s words, they are “the heartbeat of the city.”
Kelly then looked up and pointed to a young woman standing behind the wall of reporters and TV cameras lined up for the day’s news conference. She wore a bright yellow jacket and a knit cap and held a broom. She was one of the cleaners Kelly was talking about. She’d paused her work briefly to listen to the speech.
“Shout out to my sister, right there,” said Kelly, who cleans Downtown office buildings. “Love you.”
Heads turned. The young woman stood motionless. She wasn’t expecting to be the center of attention and appeared relieved when the moment quickly passed. Twenty minutes later, however, after the speeches had ended and union leaders were shaking hands a few yards away, the young woman smiled and admitted it felt good to be acknowledged.
In just a few short weeks, we’ve become accustomed to watching exactly the opposite play out on our daily news feeds: powerful people celebrating the brutalizing of workers. So this one brief moment at Mellon Square Park is worth noting. Perhaps it was a glimmer of hope. In Pittsburgh, at least, someone who works for a wage can be seen not as a target, but someone of value.
In fact, working folks in Pittsburgh are now so worthy that they find themselves at the center of a fight. Workers are actually wanted here, at least in the Democratic mayoral primary race. The two candidates — incumbent Ed Gainey and challenger Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor — are scrambling to get the attention and backing of wage earners and their unions.
O’Connor has the support of unions representing ironworkers, plumbers, steamfitters, bricklayers, sheet metal workers, boilermakers, painters and laborers. On Tuesday, Gainey squared up to the same small podium used moments earlier by Kelly and other labor officials, and accepted the backing of unions covering a range of workers, including nurses and hospital employees, cleaners, teachers, college professors, housekeepers, dishwashers, waiters and bartenders. (He earlier picked up the endorsement of the United Steelworkers, one of the city’s most influential unions.)
Right off the bat, Gainey mentioned his willingness to stand up to President Donald Trump. “We want to make sure that we continue to do that as Trump’s operatives want to mingle in the Democratic primary,” Gainey said.
This was a dig at O’Connor, and it says something about the state of our politics today. Gainey has blasted his opponent for accepting money from donors who in the past had supported Republican candidates, including Trump. O’Connor has fired back, calling Gainey’s attack a desperate move. Republicans have given to Gainey’s campaign, as well, he said.
Gainey then went local, noting his support for organized nurses, university workers, museum and library employees and Starbucks baristas fighting to organize and negotiate a contract.
“Over the past three years, I’ve been proud to stand with you on all picket lines,” Gainey said. We should acknowledge here that Gainey has spoken at a number of rallies supporting striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers, including those who publish PUP.
Then he again shifted his attention to Washington, D.C. The shenanigans there are keeping a lot of working folks up at night. One rich guy wearing a weird cap brags that he’s firing tens of thousands of federal workers, and nobody seems capable of doing anything about it. It’s as if the steel industry had been decimated by a single person who took glee seeing people line up at the Rainbow Kitchen. The carnage among federal workers has become a rallying cry on the left.
“We’ve got a real fight right now on our hands,” Gainey said. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the White House, fighting for corporations, trying to make our workers lose their jobs at every turn. We’ve always known Donald Trump to be a scab.”
By our count, Gainey mentioned Trump eight times and Elon Musk twice. The mayor is obviously hearing the same conversations we have. Rank and file Democrats are asking, “Who will stand up for wage earners?” Senate Democrats, who last week had their “no mas” moment and caved to Republicans before a single punch was thrown? Uh, no. The courts? Good luck with the Supremes. Democrats are looking for a fighter.
Gainey strived to establish himself as that fighter — and Pittsburgh as a bastion for progressive Democrats. He didn’t shy away from issues that some in the party seem to be backing away from.
“No matter what Trump does in Washington, D.C., here we will fight for our rights,” Gainey said. “We will fight for the rights of our immigrant community. We will fight for the rights of DEI. We will fight for the rights of our union brothers and sisters.”
Both O’Connor and Gainey have said they won’t assist federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. When he announced his run for mayor in December, O’Connor said Gainey lacked vision for the city and was managing decline instead of growing the city.
Gainey takes a lot of blows. Skittish radio scolds describe Downtown as an apocalyptic hellhole, and the mayor goes through police chiefs the way Spinal Tap goes through drummers. But as speakers on Tuesday noted, he’s had his victories.
Bill Hileman, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, said that there’s been a “dramatic reduction in crime” in the city — that includes a 33% drop in homicides. He pointed out that “last year, there were no deaths by firearms of children aged 13 to 17 in our city.”
In a joint statement, the unions praised the mayor for “building new affordable housing, holding giant so-called ‘nonprofit’ corporations accountable to pay their fair share of taxes, and bringing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to our city. “
Affordable housing, crime, development that doesn’t squeeze out vulnerable communities — these are all big issues that affect residents’ daily lives. So do the actions of the new administration in Washington. We’re wondering, how toxic are Trump and Musk to Pittsburgh’s Democrats? This season’s Democratic mayoral primary will give us a clear answer.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.