Dear Editor:

I was hopeful that Rep. Hawke might have just picked up the phone and said something like: “Hey Fred, we didn't get a chance to talk, let’s talk about your concerns now.” But instead she responds, through a proxy, with excuses, insults and gross misrepresentations.

Wage earners know who is buttering their bread or who is eating their lunch. I work at Bath Iron Works and met with President Fred Harris whose annual take is likely greater than what the average BIW worker earns in a lifetime. His boss, the CEO of GD, takes over $18 million a year. Their message to the workers is simple: We must compete against shipyards that have lower costs.

This is the story we hear over and over as business owners seek to force down worker’s earnings while cutting themselves an ever larger slice of the economic pie. In Rep. Hawke’s business friendly world of trickle down economics, we are left with crumbs from the master's table.

With Rep. Hawke's complaint of having to pay for workman's comp and unemployment insurance, I ask again, what of the injured or laid off employees and their families? When one of her workers is injured or is laid off, what are they supposed to do? They cannot let their children go. Moving into a tent and hunting and gathering might be a reality without these earned protections.

What Rep. Hawke and the business friendly crowd are missing is that families are the smallest and riskiest of businesses. Wage earners share in all the risks of a business and then some. After all, if the business goes under, so does the worker’s income. But this should not exempt business owners from their responsibility to their workers or customers.

I will again go up to Augusta on May 4 to plead with lawmakers to give wage earners a fair shot at earning an honest wage for an honest day's work. If she is not too busy taking workers hard earned protections away in the name of being business friendly, maybe we can talk then.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay