What is the position of Chris Thomas on wages and workers' rights?

Chris Thomas is a strong union supporter who believes organized labor is one of the most powerful tools working people have to secure fair pay and safe conditions. He is direct about this position, coming from a working-class family where the people he grew up around—veterans, coal miners, and corrections officers—understood a solidarity that he feels has been somewhat lost in recent decades. He believes that when workers organize, they win, and when they are isolated, they get picked off one by one. 

Thomas also worked as a construction worker. He knows what it means to do physical, demanding labor and to depend on fair pay and safe conditions, and he knows the difference a union makes.

• Wages have not kept pace with costs because the balance of power in Harrisburg has tilted toward corporations and away from workers.

• Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has not been raised in years and remains at the federal minimum of $7.25, which Thomas views as a moral failure.

• Workers’ right to organize is under pressure across the country, and state-level policy can either protect that right or undermine it.

In Harrisburg, Thomas will fight for wages that keep pace with the cost of living, for the right of workers to organize without retaliation, and for labor protections that treat working people as the backbone of this economy—not a cost to be minimized.