New contact person named for Robert Yaple Memorial Park

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Holy Redeemer takes first place in speech

In 2001, I worked for RCA Corp./Thompson Consumer Electronics in Dunmore. After 30 years, I was making a good salary; but when the business moved to Mexico in 2001, reality set in for me.This is when I went to work for employers such as Marywood University, Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center and Plains Township, just to mention a few, that were paying only $8 an hour. Just try to support three children, a wife and pay all of your bills. It doesn&#8217;t work out that well.I bring this up because state Sen. Lisa Baker recently put a piece in the paper that she doesn&#8217;t know how employers are going to pay their employees if a bill is passed by the state Legislature to pay employees $10-an-hour wages.This state senator is making $87,000 a year, plus benefits, and her husband was working for the state in Scranton at a salary of $94,000-a-year, plus benefits.Shame on Lisa for trying to deprive an employee of trying to make a living to support his family. I was at a taxpayers meeting recently and I found out that the state has four human resources departments, four parking lot departments and four IT departments, just a few to mention, that cost the taxpayers a lot of extra money.I was listening to the budget meetings the last two weeks; guess what I found out? That most of the state legislators are businessmen in the private sector, so they don&#8217;t want to pay their employees more money.What I see in the budget meetings is a lot of wasteful spending. We have a local senator from the Scranton area, John Blake, who is the Democratic chair of the state Senate Finance Committee. All I want from Mr. Blake is for him to recommend cuts to be made to save money in the budget. It will be a start to eliminate property taxes with the money they save in the budget.This month, the governor executed an executive order to ensure state workers will be paid no less than $10.15 an hour; plus, employees of all companies that have contracts with the state must pay employees a minimum of $10.15 an hour.Why can&#8217;t the governor or state legislators execute the same power to give all employees the same compensation on the outside?Joe McCabeExeter

Letter to the Editor: Lift minimum wage for all Pennsylvania workers, not only those in government