LEWISTON – More than 200 people gathered. More than 10 labor unions from across the state were represented. And one message rang as clear as the September sky shining overhead.

Change is needed. Change is coming. Change could be just 63 days away, but it will take the largest union-member mobilization in Maine to help make it happen, a national labor leader told a crowd here Monday.

“My message here today is that we have an opportunity with this election to turn this country around,” said Arlene Holt Baker, executive vice president of the national AFL-CIO. “This economy has not been working for working families for a long time.”

She was one of several union representatives and elected officials from Maine who came out Monday to support Democratic candidates during the second annual family barbecue hosted by the West Maine Labor Council at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall in Lewiston. Candidates included Congressman Tom Allen seeking the U.S. Senate seat held by Susan Collins, Chellie Pingree seeking Allen’s seat in Congress, and incumbent Congressman Mike Michaud.

No stranger to the union movement, Holt Baker is a 30-year veteran organizer who spent a majority of her career with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union in California. She moved to the national AFL-CIO stage in 1995, and was elected executive vice president of the organization in 2007, making her the highest ranking African-American woman in the union movement.

“Too many people – too many working people – in this country are losing their homes and most working people I know only own one home,” Holt Baker said, criticizing Republican presidential candidate John McCain for not knowing how many homes he owned when asked last week. “We need to build a middle class by building worker power.”

Holt Baker roused the crowd and called unions to action, urging Maine members and their families to join the grassroots effort to take back Washington. In addition to the mortgage crisis and unified health care, she talked at length about the Employee Free Choice Act. Supporters of the bill presently before Congress argue it will level the playing field for workers and employers, while helping rebuild America’s shrinking middle class, by restoring workers’ freedom to choose a union.

“We may not have a whole lot of money, but we have soldiers. And we need all of you to be soldiers for us,” Holt Baker said.

Holt Baker also assured U.S. Congressman Tom Allen, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, that the AFL-CIO “has your back” when it comes to the negative campaign ads running in Maine about his support of the bill.

Allen thanked the crowd for its support and promised to continue his fight for the rights of working class families in Maine. He stressed that the U.S. Senate race in Maine could mean the difference between a Democrat or Republican senate majority.

“We need to carry Androscoggin County to carry the state of Maine,” Allen told his supporters. “And we need to carry the state of Maine to carry the senate.”