LEWISTON – There were burgers and dogs.

But a Labor Day cookout Monday on the Goddard Road involved more than food and fun.

At the first Labor Day barbecue held by the Western Maine Labor Council, topics included recognizing the workers who make the economy run, a need for federal legislation for health care for everyone and laws to make unions easier to organize.

“If you waited a long time for a hamburger, that’s because we only expected half of you. We’ve had a fantastic turnout,” organizer Don Berry said to the crowd of about 125. Berry works as an electrician in Lewiston and belongs to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 567.

“We decided to do this barbecue because Labor Day is ours. We wanted it back, and we took it back,” Berry said to applause.

The Western Maine Labor Council was formed in October. It’s a coalition of unions in western Maine, and represents about 8,000 workers.

After the meal, a number of speakers addressed the crowd. Joe Mailey recalled the history of Labor Day, how unions pushed for the holiday in the 1800s. In 1891 Labor Day became a legal holiday in Maine, but it took three more years before Congress made it a national holiday, Mailey said.

Peter Keefe spoke for a “Stop the Sale” campaign, warning that Verizon could be sold to FairPoint of North Carolina. If that happens Keefe warned that Maine’s phone service could suffer, which would hurt workers and businesses. NorthPoint is millions in debt, he said. Buying Verizon would make their debt even larger.

Vanessa Sylvester of the Maine State Nurses Association said the top priorities of the nurses union are patient safety and single-payer health care.

When hospital floors are understaffed, patients are at risk, she said. And nurses see first hand what happens to people without health care. The solution she warned won’t come from those now profiting, what she called “revenue generating entities,” hospitals, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. What’s needed is single-payer health care, “and we are behind it,” Sylvester said.

Ed Gorham and Matt Schlobohm of the AFL-CIO urged workers to elect lawmakers who will pass a federal Employee Free Choice Act. That law would make it easier for workers to unionize and have basic worker rights.

In a rally style, Ethan Miller of Greene performed pro-worker songs, including “Organized Crime” and “Solidarity Forever.”

In his “Organized Crime” he sang about large corporations making big profits at the expense of poorly paid workers. “Raise up your hand now if you’ve got a job, making dirt wages working until your head throbs. They’re making a profit by robbing us blind. They say it’s just business, it’s organized crime,” Miller sang.

Workers have lost ground in recent years, he said after singing.

Wages have been going down. Unions are harder to organize and have been losing ground, while companies hire more temporary and undocumented workers, Miller said.

He recommended people get involved in the Western Maine Labor Council and elect politicians who are concerned with everyday workers.

The council “isn’t just about unions, it’s for all members of our community coming together for working people,” Miller said. During elections, “It’s not ‘let’s get so-and-so in office and they’ll help us.’ It’s about building grassroots movements to which those politicians are accountable.”