The New Hampshire chapter of the State Employees Association joined local faith leaders in Concord Wednesday to rally for workers' rights.
The rally was timed to the 50th anniversary of the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Rev. Eric Jackson of the Brookside Congregational Church in Manchester spoke at the Legislative Office Building in Concord.
“One of the last things, actually, that Dr. King did was he was organizing sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, and was really engaged in the struggle for economic justice and workers’ rights,” Jackson said.
Stan Freeda is director of the Office of Educational Technology, at the state Department of Education. He says he thinks it's great that labor and faith-based groups are joining forces for workers’ rights.
"The way that we'll succeed as the common people is to all get together and make sure that our differences are not outweighed by our similarities,” Freeda said. “We really are all working for the same thing and that's to have a decent life." Freeda added that he feels the state is picking away at workers benefits and that he'd like to see fair living wages for all pay grades in the state worker contract.
The state's labor union says Wednesday marks the 278th day state workers have gone without a contract. Demonstrators hand-delivered a letter to Governor Chris Sununu's office, urging him to take action for a fair deal with state employees.