By Steve Peoples
Journal State House bureau

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Known labor critic Douglas Gablinske, D-Bristol, has extended an olive branch to the head of the state's second-largest teachers union.

Gablinske will have lunch this week with Marcia Reback, president of the 9,000-member Rhode Island Federation of Teachers. The Hemenway's Restaurant meeting comes at the lawmaker's request.

Gablinske tells Political Scene he felt a need to smooth over tensions caused by his remark at a recent House Labor Committee hearing on a binding arbitration for teachers unions.

Don't remember what he said?

We'll remind you: "Do you not think that the pigs at the public trough have gone too far?" Gablinske said to Reback, prompting excited oohs from the taxpayer groups that packed the hearing.

"I wasn't talking about teachers," Gablinske later explained. "I was talking about the voracious appetite of unions to change public policy in their advantage."

It's worth noting that Gablinske's wife is a school administrator.