James Golden knew the crowbar wasn’t the right tool for the job, but it was what the bosses provided when he needed to perform work on a piece of equipment at the Kumho Tire plant in Macon, Georgia.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The crowbar slipped from Golden’s hand and smacked him in the head. Bleeding, yet unable to find adequate help on the sparsely staffed night shift, Golden drove himself to the hospital while a supervisor agonized over whether to fill out paperwork about the injury or try to get the machine operating once more.

While the memory of that night still infuriates him, Golden takes comfort in knowing that he and his 325 coworkers now have the power to protect themselves, look out for one another, and hold management accountable.

Along with wage increases, better work-life balance, and other wins, the workers gained a real voice on the job in early August when they ratified their first contract with Kumho as members of the United Steelworkers (USW).

The contract establishes a labor-management workplace improvement committee, affording Golden and others on the front lines the means to address issues like turnover, efficiency, and quality.

The agreement also mandates a joint health and safety committee, giving workers not only a say in how to properly operate and maintain equipment but also a role in developing emergency plans and input into other aspects of plant safety.

“It’s a new day,” Golden said, referring to the power of a first contract to level the playing field and afford workers a seat at the table. “This is the law of the land.”

Workers who want to band together for better futures often face prolonged and brutal anti-union campaigns from employers hellbent on holding them down.

Kumho, for example, committed such egregious violations of workers’ rights that an administrative law judge at one point ordered company representatives to call a plant-wide meeting and read a statement acknowledging their illegal conduct.

“Solidarity means everything,” said Golden, recalling how workers met at bars and cookouts to build the union drive and support one another during management’s attacks.

“I know each of us was going to have a better work environment and a living wage,” he added, explaining his own commitment to the effort. “I have no problem sacrificing for the greater good. I’m a veteran. I sacrificed eight years to go and serve my country.”

Workers ultimately achieved victory in 2021 when the National Labor Relations Board certified their vote to join the USW, making them the first U.S. tire workers to unionize in more than 40 years. But then, like all new union members, they immediately began a new battle at the bargaining table, testing their collective resolve all over again.

When bullying fails to stop workers from organizing, many employers simply shift gears and try to thwart bargaining.

More than one-third of companies use anti-union attorneys to derail negotiations, and a quarter threaten to close workplaces in an effort to sabotage contract talks, among other abuses, according to new research by Cornell University.

Starbucks’ “dirty war” on baristas, for example, includes starving union leaders of work hours in a bid to make them quit and dragging out negotiations with the aim of gutting solidarity, frustrating workers, and killing the union.

Kumho similarly bogged down negotiations for two years, balking at raises, nitpicking language, and throwing up other roadblocks. But union activists stayed the course and worked hard to engage new hires, averting the threat that turnover poses to collective strength.

“We didn’t give up,” observed Christopher Burks, who served with Golden on the workers’ bargaining committee, noting that a grievance procedure and other protections from bullying are among the first contract’s greatest strengths.

Similar concerns have prompted growing numbers of workers, across numerous industries, to unionize in the wake of the pandemic. And now those organizing victories are generating a wave of first contracts with transformative changes.

That’s especially evident in the South, where more and more workers are rising up against employers and right-wing politicians who long conspired to oppress them and keep unions out.

Nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, secured a first contract in 2021 that affords them a long-overdue voice on the staffing issues crucial to worker and patient well-being. Workers at a Coca-Cola Consolidated warehouse in Kentucky ratified a first agreement in the spring of 2023 providing a much-needed grievance process and other enhancements.

And newly unionized cleaners at Virginia Commonwealth University just negotiated historic pay increases, forcing the school to begin valuing them.

“You’re not getting what you’re worth for the job that you do,” Burks said of many workers in the South, noting that some companies deliberately locate in the region to exploit the historically poor wages and low union density.

“Some people are waking up and not going for that. It’s just like at Blue Bird,” he added, referring to about 1,400 workers at the Fort Valley, Georgia, bus company who voted in May 2023 to join the USW and seek better working conditions.

Many other workers also want to join unions and gain a voice on the job, but they need the support that only a long-overdue modernization of America’s labor laws can provide.

Right now, companies regularly obstruct organizing and bargaining because it’s so easy for them to get away with it. Workers’ unfair labor practice charges take months or even years to resolve. Even then, employers like Kumho face virtually no penalties for illegally firing workers during union drives or dragging out talks.

Golden and Burks want Congress to pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to exercise their will and impose fines on employers who break the law during union drives. It also would force employers to the negotiating table and impose mandatory arbitration when employers refuse good-faith bargaining for a first contract.

“I think it would finally make the employer respect your rights,” Burks said.

AUTHOR BIO: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

The grief hits Scott Campbell like a ton of bricks every time he walks into the union hall and sees the memorial to the fallen workers.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Seven members of the United Steelworkers (USW) union reported for their shifts at the former Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington, on April 2, 2010, and never drove back out. They perished when a decades-old, structurally deficient piece of equipment called a heat exchanger exploded and caught fire in one of the worst industrial incidents in state history.

Campbell and other members of USW Local 12-591 pay tribute to the seven with a laser focus on safety at the refinery, currently owned by Marathon.

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But now they’re seizing the chance to go even further and spare workers at other refineries the kind of loss that weighs so heavily on them. Campbell, president of Local 12-591, is helping to lead the union’s push for stronger rules aimed at revolutionizing the safety culture at all five refineries in the state.

The proposed improvements, modeled on the industry-leading advances that the USW pushed California to enact in 2017, represent the first comprehensive, statewide enhancements to “process safety management” (PSM) at Washington’s refineries in nearly 30 years. PSM refers to how workers and management use planning, training, and equipment to reduce risk and respond to incidents.

“Improving process safety is something that we always want to keep working on,” explained Campbell, who will testify during upcoming public hearings on the proposed rules overhaul. “It’s not something we ever think is finished. We’re always learning, and technology is always changing.”

“We don’t want to go backward. We don’t want to get complacent,” emphasized Campbell, noting that oil companies increasingly attempt to “exploit the loopholes” in the current, outdated rules despite the deadly warnings provided by the Tesoro incident and other tragedies.

For example, Campbell said, refineries sometimes have one management representative resolve a safety concern when the safer, prudent course would be to assemble a team of experts from engineering, production, and other disciplines to work through the issue.

The new PSM rules—also championed by community residents and other advocates fighting alongside the USW—would force employers to toe the line and hold management accountable. Among many other provisions, they’d require refineries to ensure the structural and mechanical integrity of equipment, make prompt repairs and give workers the authority to suspend operations when they identify hazards.

Lessons learned from the Tesoro disaster are driving those changes.

After the tragedy there, investigators denounced the company’s lax safety culture. They found that the refinery “normalized” hazardous conditions, including leaks from heat exchangers, and failed to take corrective action.

Instead, Tesoro looked the other way. On the day of the disaster, bosses assigned seven workers to the heat exchanger—far more than otherwise needed for the procedure underway there at the time—to handle leaks that the refinery failed to address through maintenance.

Besides requiring refineries to fix obvious problems, the new PSM rules place a heightened focus on proactively identifying issues and addressing them before they put lives at risk. Before installing a bigger pump, for example, a facility would have to assess the environmental impact, evaluate the refinery’s fire suppression system and ensure the capacity of the piping system, among other issues.

Just as important, the proposed rules mandate extensive worker involvement not only in hazard analysis and emergency preparedness but in responding to incidents and conducting the comprehensive “root cause” investigations that take place afterward.

“We are the experts on the equipment. We live here, 24/7,” Campbell said, referring to the rotating crews of USW members who operate the refinery around the clock. “We know when something’s being ignored. We know when corners are being cut. We need help from our state officials to enforce the behaviors we know to be safest.”

The same commitment to a path forward prompted USW members in California to successfully push for an overhaul of their state’s PSM rules after a 2012 fire at a Chevron refinery sent 15,000 people to hospitals with breathing problems.

In the wake of that disaster, investigators determined that the company repeatedly ignored warnings about corroded piping. One of those compromised pipes eventually ruptured and released flammable material, sparking the fire.

“It was a known problem, and it wasn’t addressed. They saved some money. That was the action they took,” Norman Rogers, second vice president of USW Local 675, said of Chevron management.

Members of Local 675 and oil workers from other USW locals across California collaborated with a broad-based community coalition in pushing through the stronger rules, which expanded worker participation in refinery operations and safety.

Rogers said workers previously felt as though they were “sitting on the bench in the dugout watching the game. Now, we are getting into the batter’s box.”

Washington officials describe California’s rules as “the most protective in the country,” and that is why Campbell and other advocates used them as a template for the improvements they’re determined to make.

The USW’s oil workers continually strive to negotiate safety improvements in collective bargaining agreements.

But stronger PSM rules at the state level bring sweeping improvements to workers at many refineries all at once. They also provide consistency and uniformity to the industry. And they offer stability to workers and communities when refineries change hands, as they often do.

“This is the ace up our sleeve,” explained Rogers, who will travel to Washington later this month to testify about his experiences with PSM in California.

“Companies will come and go. Operating philosophies and safety philosophies will change. The only thing we have to hold onto are the regulations. That they’re strong and give us a voice are crucial.”

AUTHOR BIO: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Sergeant Jackie E. Garland, twice wounded during combat in Vietnam, returned home only to face even more battles that battered his spirit as well as his body.

The ex-Marine and his wife, Helen, struggled for decades to support their six children while fighting for service disability benefits that always remained a few steps out of reach.

Garland—wracked by pain from the shrapnel he took in his back and hepatitis he contracted during surgery to repair the damage to his spine—died feeling abandoned by his country.

Spurred by that tragedy, George Walsh, Garland’s son-in-law, now finds himself on the front lines of efforts to improve support for veterans and arrest the epidemics of suicide, homelessness, and alienation afflicting those who served.

Walsh, a trustee of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 10-00086, is helping to lead the union’s push for the federal Commitment to Veteran Support and Outreach (CVSO) Act. The bill would expand the ranks of county veteran service officers across the nation and provide other resources needed to connect veterans with care.

“This is a no-brainer. We send people to war. We ask them to fight for their country. We need to start taking care of them,” explained Walsh, himself a veteran of the Navy submarine service who later served in the Reserve as a Seabee. “We need to start putting our money where our mouths are and helping these veterans and their families.”

“This is really a good piece of legislation. We should have had this years ago,” added Walsh, a USW safety representative at the Merck plant in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, noting many veterans feel adrift and lose hope. “My father-in-law was that way.”

County veteran service officers are trained advocates, accredited by the federal government, who help former service members, their loved ones, and caregivers “navigate the complex intergovernmental chain of veterans services and resources.”

They make veterans aware of the medical benefits as well as the education, job search, housing assistance, and other services available to them. They also assist veterans in applying for these opportunities and go to bat for them if government agencies balk at approving claims or applications.

These grassroots officials leverage billions in support every year. But there’s a dire shortage of them across the country.

The CVSO Act would provide $50 million a year for counties to hire more veteran service officers and fund outreach campaigns aimed at connecting ex-service members with assistance.

High levels of suicide and homelessness speak to veterans’ struggles on the home front. Yet the resources to confront these challenges often go unused because veterans either don’t know what’s available to them or struggle to access it.

Walsh’s in-laws felt overwhelmed trying to penetrate the bureaucracy on their own while coping with life’s daily challenges.

“If it wasn’t for my mother-in-law, I don’t know how they would have done it,” said Walsh, noting that Helen Garland, a Navy nurse who met her husband during his recovery at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, largely held the family together on her own.

He said his father-in-law, once a “Marine’s Marine” who wanted a military career, endured pain every day and became so disillusioned with the government’s treatment of him that he refused to let taps be played at his funeral.

Walsh knows what an enormous difference a county veteran service officer would have made because, at the end of his father-in-law’s life, he found one.

He recalled watching a nonprofit television channel one night when he saw an interview with Elias Tallas, a veteran service officer from Berks County who served with the Army in Vietnam.

He tracked down a phone number for Tallas, met him a couple of days later, and handed over the “meticulous notes” his mother-in-law kept about Jackie Garland’s quest for benefits.

Tallas agreed to wade into the case. And although his assistance came too late to help Jackie Garland, he succeeded in securing benefits for Helen Garland that enabled her to live decently for the rest of her life.

Walsh wants all former service members to have the expertise, support, and compassion that Tallas provided. Motivated by respect for his in-laws and a sense of duty to fellow veterans, he’s meeting with members of Congress to explain the need for the CVSO Act.

He starts those meetings by showing his father-in-law’s photo. “I’d like to introduce you to Sergeant Jackie E. Garland,” he says, then tells his story.

While the Garlands fought on their own, other veterans lean on one another—sharing leads, tips, and information—as they try to navigate the system. In July 2023, for example, Frank Brondum and a friend exchanged information about the various education opportunities available to them.

It’s outrageous, he said, for the nation to leave veterans in the dark. “I’m 42 years old, I served for 13 years, and I’m still learning about the benefits I’m qualified for,” said Brondum, a member of USW Local 13-1 who works at the Shell refinery in Deer Park, Texas.

Brondum, who served in the Army, said more than two dozen former service members at the refinery alone would benefit from a single point of contact for veterans programs.

However, it’s as important to publicize the work of the county veteran service officers as it is the benefits and services themselves, Brondum said, noting he only found out about his county’s representative in July 2023.

Once they’re back home, Walsh said, veterans deserve a system of care that serves them as reliably as they did the nation.

“When he was asked to serve, he served,” Walsh observed of his father-in-law. “There was no hesitation on his part.”

AUTHOR BIO: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

John Campbell and other union activists led the fight in 2021 for historic infrastructure legislation needed to modernize the nation, support millions of good-paying jobs, and supercharge the economy.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

They wrote tens of thousands of postcards, made countless phone calls, and pounded the halls of the U.S. Capitol, ultimately securing enough votes to overcome Republican opposition and push the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) through the Democratic-led Congress. Democratic President Joe Biden swiftly signed the legislation into law.

Now, as that union victory unleashes $1.2 trillion for new roads and other hugely popular projects from coast to coast, Republicans who tried to kill the legislation want to jump on the bandwagon and take credit for the same investments they once opposed.

“Republicans are so short-sighted that they can’t see past their donors,” fumed Campbell, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), pointing out how ridiculous opponents of the infrastructure package look as money floods into their districts for high-speed broadband, lead-free drinking water, and other life-changing initiatives.

“They have no shame,” Campbell said of the Republicans trying to evade responsibility for how they voted. “They have no integrity. They have no principles.”

For example, Representative Robert B. Aderholt of Alabama in June issued a press release in which he praised a $1.6 million grant for a railroad bridge in his district and proclaimed himself “always happy to support this type of funding in Congress.”

Yet he voted against the IIJA, which expanded the very program providing the grant for the railroad bridge.

Representative Ashley Hinson, who represents part of Campbell’s home state of Iowa, was another of the 200 House Republicans who ignored workers’ demands and voted against the IIJA.

But nothing as inconvenient as the truth was going to stop Hinson from trying to grab the limelight and take credit in a tweet when the Army Corps of Engineers announced $829 million in IIJA funding for a major project benefiting her constituents.

The Corps will use the funds to construct a new 1,200-foot lock and repair other parts of an Upper Mississippi River transportation system critical not only for Midwestern farmers, miners, and factory workers but for the entire nation’s economy.

It’s game-changing for sure, no thanks to Hinson. In all, the IIJA delivers billions for Iowa, including $19 million so far to prevent the kind of flooding that ravaged much of the state, including Cedar Rapids, part of Hinson’s district, in 2008.

It’s also providing the city of Waterloo—in Hinson’s district—with $20.5 million for a “complete streets project” on La Porte Road that will improve safety for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians.

And it’s delivering $20.4 million to Eastern Iowa Airport—also part of Hinson’s district—for a modernization effort that will bring more gates, improved facilities for passengers with special needs, and other upgrades. After attempting to torpedo the IIJA, Hinson had the gall to join other officials at a press conference to tout the airport overhaul and say she’s “proud” of the work being done there.

The benefits of these and other IIJA projects will last for generations and enhance national security, noted Campbell, a retired tire worker and member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 310L who’s spent decades supporting pro-worker candidates and initiatives.

“This bill is critical for the success of America. Period,” said Campbell, who’s angry with Hinson not only for boasting about investments she opposed but for sitting on the sidelines while working Iowans charted a path forward.

“What was her alternative?” he said, referring to the infrastructure legislation. “What did she propose to make Iowans’ lives better?”

Other Republicans who opposed the infrastructure program all but admitted their folly by sending letters to the Biden administration seeking IIJA funds for projects their constituents want and need.

Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona sent three letters requesting millions for a trio of road projects, while Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky sent 10 letters seeking support for road, riverwalk, and dam improvements, among other work.

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee voted against the bill as well but later wrote letters seeking funding for nine projects and tweeted her support for the progress that the city of Wartburg made in expanding broadband access. The IIJA provides millions for Tennessee to deliver high-speed internet to every household.

The IIJA—also opposed by Senator Bill Hagerty and all of the Republican members of Tennessee’s House delegation—allocated millions more for the state’s roads and bridges as well as $150 million to support a new plant in Chattanooga that will supply graphite for the electric vehicle market and other industries.

Those investments will help to foster growth that residents of Tennessee already see all around them.

“Jobs are here,” said Van Tenpenny, financial secretary for USW Local 1155L, noting the infrastructure program creates new demand for truck tires produced by union members at the Bridgestone plant in Warren County while also making the highway improvements needed to more efficiently get products to customers.

As Republicans try to take credit for the infrastructure program, Tenpenny said, it’s important for union members to continue pointing out the truth. Workers and their Democratic allies created the wave of progress now washing across the nation.

“We’re responsible for it,” he said.

AUTHOR BIO: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

The heat index soared to 111 degrees in Houston, Texas, but the real-feel temperature climbed even higher than that inside the heavy personal protective equipment (PPE) that John Hayes and his colleagues at Ecoservices wear on the job.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Sweat poured from the workers clad in full-body hazardous materials suits, heavy gloves, splash hoods, and steel-toed boots as they sampled and processed chemicals from huge metal containers under a searing sun.

Fortunately, as members of the United Steelworkers (USW), these workers negotiated a policy requiring the chemical treatment company to provide shade, cool-down periods, and other measures to protect them during sweltering days.

But unless all Americans have commonsense safeguards like these, workers across the country will continue to get sick and die during ever-worsening heat waves.

The USW, other unions, and advocacy groups are calling on the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to speedily enact a national standard specifying the minimum steps all employers need to take to safeguard workers from unprecedented and deadly bouts of heat.

Because of union advocacy, OSHA already has national standards that protect workers from falls, trench collapses, asbestos exposure, infectious diseases, injuries from equipment, and many other workplace hazards. It’s way past time to also protect workers from the heat waves that are growing more severe, lasting longer, and claiming more lives each year.

“Heat affects everybody. It doesn’t care about age,” observed Hayes, president of USW Local 227’s Ecoservices unit, who helped to negotiate the heat-related protections for about 70 workers in treatment services, maintenance, logistics, and other departments.

“There’s so many things they can come up with,” he said of OSHA officials.

The policy the union negotiated with Ecoservices requires low-cost, sensible measures like water, electrolytes, modified work schedules, tents and fans, and the authority to stop work when conditions become unhealthy and unsafe.

“If you start to feel dizzy or lightheaded, take your timeout,” Hayes reminds coworkers. “Don’t worry about it.”

In 2021, OSHA initiated efforts “to consider a heat-specific workplace rule.” In the meantime, states and local governments are free to make their own rules, let workers fend for themselves, or even put workers at greater risk.

While workers everywhere would benefit from a national heat standard, nowhere is the need more obvious than in Texas.

It’s one of the states hardest hit by the heat wave now blistering much of the country, with cities like Junction and Laredo shattering heat records.

Worse, in the midst of the crisis, right-wing Governor Greg Abbott signed a new law sweeping aside city and county ordinances mandating water breaks for construction workers. The so-called “Death Star law” is nothing but blatant pandering to Abbott’s corporate cronies at the expense of workers’ lives.

The law goes into effect on September 1. But in the three weeks from when Abbott signed it, at least three workers already died in the face of scorching conditions.

One was a letter carrier, another a utility lineman who traveled from West Virginia to Texas to restore power knocked out by the heat, and the third an otherwise healthy construction worker who collapsed while helping to meet Houston’s long-running building boom.

“We were called essential workers,” Hayes said, referring to Texans who remained at their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic to serve residents and keep the state operating. “Now some of us can’t even get a drink of water.”

Heat already ranks among the top causes of occupational incidents and death, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources.

Heat can directly sicken or kill, as it did the Texas construction worker. But it also induces fatigue, dizziness, and cognitive impairments, leading to falls and other incidents on the job.

And with climate change fueling heat waves, workers face ever-greater risks.

While workers in the construction, agriculture, and other outdoor industries battle the sun, those working indoors face their own challenges from summer heat that’s magnified by steel beams, metal pipes, and energy-generating equipment.

“First of all, we’ve got huge furnaces that are melting down scrap aluminum to cast ingots,” explained David “Buzz” Sawyer, president of USW Local 309, which represents about 840 workers at two Arconic plants in Alcoa, Tennessee.

“It goes into the furnace, and from that point on, it’s either molten or relatively close to molten,” continued Sawyer, noting that welding jobs, a rolling mill, and other processes also expose workers to heat as they manufacture material for road signs, cars, and other products.

Like workers at Ecoservices, Local 309 members negotiated a contract with numerous protections, including the authority to stop work, in dangerous temperatures. “We’re the ones doing the work and know what a safer job looks like,” observed Sawyer.

Worker solidarity fuels the robust safety system. But a healthy, stable workforce is also in the company’s best interest, he said, noting the national heat standard is needed because some employers, as well as state officials like Abbott, lack both compassion and reason.

“How in the world can you deny your workers an opportunity to get a drink of water?” he said. “If you’re going to do that, what else are you going to do?”

Sawyer wants others to know about the strong safety measures that union members built at Arconic and to think, “We deserve it, too.”

At the end of a shift, he noted, “This is what takes you home to your family.”

AUTHOR BIO: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

It wasn’t enough for owners of lucrative Southern California car washes to cheat their workers out of wages and overtime.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

They made workers pay for the towels they used to clean cars, denied them rest breaks, forced them to toil in filthy water that bred foot fungus, and even required the so-called “carwasheros” to hand-wash vehicles with skin-burning solvents.

Outraged members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675 launched an effort to help these workers about a dozen years ago, just as the state’s new labor commissioner, Julie Su, kicked off her own battle against the state’s shadow economy.

In a one-two punch that still reverberates through the industry, the USW empowered carwasheros at the negotiating table while Su ramped up enforcement of labor laws, pursued millions in back wages, and filed criminal charges against unscrupulous bosses.

Given this and other fights Su waged on behalf of ordinary people, it’s no surprise that workers across the country are demanding her confirmation as the next U.S. secretary of labor. President Joe Biden nominated Su for the Cabinet post on February 28, but the Senate has yet to vote.

The labor secretary enforces workers’ rights along with federal wage, overtime, and child labor laws. The nation’s top labor cop also fights discrimination, oversees workplace safety agencies, administers pension security programs, and polices employer compliance with shutdown and layoff rules.

To truly make a difference, however, the secretary needs the ardor for working people and impatience for change that define Su’s career.

“It’s one thing to be a policy person. It’s another to connect with people on an emotional level,” said David Campbell, secretary-treasurer of Local 675, recalling not only the skill but the passion and tenacity that Su brought to the fight for car wash workers.

The multi-million industry preyed on recent immigrants, the homeless, and other vulnerable people, said Campbell, noting one “was paid with the privilege of sleeping in the car wash bathroom at night.”

“The car washes knew there was a special enforcement program going on with the labor commissioner. So that made them—at least some of them—more amenable to collective bargaining agreements,” which increased wages, improved working conditions, and gave workers a voice, explained Campbell, whose local worked with several community partners on the initiative.

Su tirelessly helps workers build better lives.

In the 1990s, as a 26-year-old attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Su helped 72 Thai workers start over after federal agents freed them from a garment sweatshop in El Monte, Calif., where they were imprisoned by barbed wire, watched by armed guards and paid by the cent.

Su won $4 million in back wages and legal protections for the workers. But she recalled being most gratified by how “the workers stood up, learned they had power, and, against all odds, defied the message they had heard their whole lives—that they should keep their heads down and know their place.”

After her appointment as California labor commissioner in 2011, Su fought not only for the carwasheros but for poorly paid workers who cleaned buildings, harvested crops, and performed other essential yet largely invisible tasks in the state’s underground economy.

She also stepped up to tackle other pressing issues, such as vigorously enforcing a California law requiring health care facilities to develop customized violence-prevention plans to protect workers like the thousands of USW members who work in hospitals and other medical settings.

And Su helped implement a law protecting workers whom unscrupulous employers deliberately misclassified as contractors so they could skimp on wages, benefits and workplace safety. That work spoke not only to Su’s drive to help workers but to her long-held conviction about the need to provide a “level playing field for honest employers to prosper and thrive.”

“Julie Su was able to greenlight important issues rather than let them founder in an uncaring bureaucracy,” observed Campbell, noting that low wages and poor working conditions for some workers drag everyone down in the long run.

“The obvious move is to raise the floor, and that’s what we should do,” noting that unions and labor enforcers have a “common interest” to protect workers and fuel the economy.

Biden tapped Su to be deputy labor secretary, the department’s No. 2 position in 2021, and then nominated her for the top role upon Secretary Marty Walsh’s departure last winter. The USW, along with dozens of unions, social justice groups, and other organizations, quickly sent senators a letter urging Su’s confirmation because of her record of accomplishments and ability to confront current challenges.

Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, she helped employers and dock workers negotiate a tentative contract that keeps West Coast seaports—and America’s economy—operating. Her work on that case drew praise from both union workers and the Pacific Maritime Association, a trade group.

Americans need Su to watch their backs more than ever, especially as a growing number of workers join unions on the heels of the pandemic and advocates push for a national version of the California law protecting health care workers.

“If she asked me to knock on doors for her, I’d be out there knocking,” said David Simmons, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) from Pasadena, Calif., explaining his eagerness to build support for Su’s nomination.

Simmons, who worked on the car wash initiative, remembers not only Su’s commitment to the workers but how she galvanized her entire agency to a mission that previous labor commissioners neglected.

“I think she’d make a great secretary of labor,” he said.

AUTHOR BIO: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Dave Smith launched a union drive many years ago that generated enthusiastic support among his coworkers, but the effort died after management hired union-busting consultants and went on the attack.

Bosses at the Minnesota electric cooperative forced his colleagues into “captive audience” meetings, where they lied about unions, threatened the workers and sowed so much fear that the group ultimately voted down a chance at a better life.

Now, thanks to legislation that Smith supported, Minnesota employers won’t be able to subject workers to that kind of bullying any longer.

Democratic Governor Tim Walz just signed a bill that not only bans the mandatory anti-union meetings employers regularly hold to try to suppress organizing drives but also enables workers to sue bosses who try to get away with holding the meetings anyway.

Even better, that measure is one of a growing number of pro-worker laws enacted around the country in early 2023 as workers, fed up with corporate greed and exploitative bosses, fight back against a system rigged against them.

Minnesota lawmakers also passed legislation in May that establishes paid family and medical leave for workers, expands workers’ compensation coverage and requires employers in numerous industries, including warehouses and health care facilities, to ramp up safety.

In addition, legislators pushed through a bill, which Walz promptly signed, creating a “Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board,” aimed at giving front-line caregivers a meaningful voice in resolving staffing shortages and other challenges facing long-term care facilities.

“It’s been such a long fight to get some of this,” noted Smith, now a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 2660 at U.S. Steel’s Keetac Mine who helped push for the legislation. “It’s great that we were able to stick it out and get it passed. Hopefully, we can accomplish even more next year.”

In the wake of the new forward-thinking laws, state Department of Labor and Industry Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach called Minnesota “the best state for workers and their families.”

This kind of progress doesn’t happen by chance.

Union members turned out in force last November to reelect Walz, keep the pro-worker majority in the House and flip the Senate, previously controlled by Republicans.

Then workers followed up their victories at the ballot box by successfully advocating for legislation aimed at leveling the playing field in the workplace.

Smith, for example, provided lawmakers with testimony explaining how the electric cooperative usurped his labor rights years ago and how that kind of harassment leaves workers “organizing in secrecy for fear of losing their jobs.”

“It always left a sour taste in my mouth,” said Smith, who stayed at the utility a couple of years longer before landing a position at Keetac in Keewatin, Minnesota.

That USW-represented job “changed my life,” he added. “We had trouble making ends meet before. Now, I’ve sent three kids to college.”

As Minnesotans charted their path forward, union members in Michigan made similar strides by helping to reelect Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and installing Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate for the first time in decades.

At the urging of those same workers, lawmakers quickly passed, and Whitmer signed, legislation repealing falsely named “right-to-work” (RTW) laws that Republicans rammed through a decade earlier to silence workers’ voices and bankrupt unions.

“Right-to-work is union busting,” noted Jay McMurran, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) from Michigan, noting these laws undermine worker solidarity and power by allowing nonmembers to receive union services for free.

Union members in Vermont helped to increase the number of pro-worker lawmakers in both chambers of the state legislature last fall. Now, they’re awaiting the House’s vote on a bill, already passed by the Senate, to ban captive audience meetings there as well.

And New York’s Democratic-controlled legislature just passed its own bill, now on Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk, protecting workers from anti-union meetings in that state.

“I do think there’s a shift,” Richard Knowles, a former USW local president at Allied Chemical in New York, said of the wave of pro-worker laws.

Workers put at risk during the pandemic and forced to endure “nonstop” production environments, among many other abuses, are not only demanding change but electing officials willing to join the fight, Knowles explained. That includes many younger workers who are contributing to the soaring level of support for unions.

“They need to get more money,” Knowles, who helped to lead 24 union drives during his career, said of young workers. “They need to get better benefits. They need to get out of their parents’ house. They need to get a union.”

While workers accumulate wins in the states, the USW and other unions also continue fighting for national legislation that will extend the same protections to all Americans wherever they live.

Democrats in the U.S. House twice passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would ban captive audience meetings, allow workers and employers to override states’ RTW laws and impose steep financial penalties on employers who violate workers’ labor rights.

The legislation would make it easier for workers to organize at a time that more and more Americans are seeking to join unions. Petitions for union elections surged 53 percent during the 2022 fiscal year and continue to increase this year, according to the National Labor Relations Board.

The PRO Act previously died because of a lack of Republican support in the Senate. But pro-worker members of Congress reintroduced it again this year, and hundreds of USW activists, including McMurran, pounded the halls of the Capitol to build support for the legislation during the union’s Rapid Response, Legislative and Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., in mid-June.

“We don’t give up,” McMurran said.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Joel Buchanan owns his home, travels, donates to charitable causes, and still has more than enough money to pay his bills on time—thanks in large part to Social Security.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Along with his union pension, it means the difference between enjoying his golden years or just scraping by.

Even so, the Pueblo, Colorado, resident refused to panic in May 2023 as right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives attempted to extort massive spending cuts in exchange for the votes needed to raise America’s debt ceiling and avert global financial calamity.

The Republicans’ recklessness threatened tens of millions of working people. But Buchanan, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), trusted President Joe Biden to counter extremism with reason and save the day with steady-handed statesmanship.

That’s exactly what happened.

Biden, a Democrat, reached across the aisle and struck a deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that protects Social Security and other lifelines while raising the debt ceiling for two years and safeguarding the world economy.

McCarthy himself credited Biden with saving Social Security and Medicare, saying he “walled off” any discussion about slashing them.

Yet Biden wasn’t finished. He worked the phones and helped to line up the bipartisan votes needed to pass the deal through both chambers, even as some members of McCarthy’s own party made clear that they’d prefer to let the nation default on its debts than give up demands to slash essential programs.

The House passed the deal May 31, and the Senate followed suit the following day. Biden noted that the legislation “protects key priorities and accomplishments.”

“He was the adult in the room. He’s done his job,” Buchanan said of Biden, who previously served as a U.S. senator for Delaware. “He’s spent much of his life in Congress. He knows how to get things done on Capitol Hill.”

Biden confronted the Republican-manufactured crisis with the same skill that enabled him to deliver historic investments in America’s infrastructure—the package includes billions for Colorado alone—and ramp up the production of semiconductors to safeguard national security.

And his approach to the debt ceiling reflected the same unwavering commitment to ordinary people that he demonstrated in capping insulin costs for seniors, enforcing workers’ labor rights, and saving dozens of failing pension plans that cover more than a million Americans.

While Biden cooperated with congressional Democrats to protect working people and strengthen the nation, Republicans aimed to inflict as much harm and pain as possible.

“We default and crash the whole system?” Buchanan asked about the Republicans’ thinking. “Where’s that going to leave us? It doesn’t make much sense to me what they’re trying to do.

“First of all, this shouldn’t even be an issue right now. We have to pay our bills,” Buchanan said of the debt ceiling, noting that many of the same Republicans feigning concern over America’s spending also voted for the 2017 tax cuts that provided windfalls to corporations and the rich while jacking up the nation’s debt.

Biden staved off the extremists’ demands for devastating cuts across numerous federal departments—proposals with the potential to kick tens of thousands of disadvantaged children out of Head Start, end Meals on Wheels for many struggling seniors, and slash housing support amid the nation’s growing battle with homelessness, among many other threats.

And the Republicans brazenly schemed to cut Social Security and Medicare, outraging Buchanan, who began paying into the system when he was 16.

The Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., recently released a study noting that “millions of people are entering their retirement years with insufficient savings to cover basic expenses and medical bills.” The study called for expanding Social Security, not cutting it.

Yet McCarthy just announced a new commission “to look at the entire budget.” He continues kowtowing to the extremists in his party, including Buchanan’s own representative, Lauren Boebert, who opposed the deal to raise the debt ceiling but did not even show up for the vote.

“She’s down in Florida, visiting the former president, or down in Texas, complaining about the border, and leaves our issues behind. She doesn’t do anything,” Buchanan said, describing her as out of touch with seniors and other Coloradans.

While Republicans seek to cut programs supporting average people, they give a pass to the richest Americans who refuse to pay their fair share.

The biggest earners represent a third of the nation’s unpaid taxes, costing the country $175 billion a year. Fortunately, Biden’s debt-ceiling deal saved funds allocated to ramp up enforcement and root out wealthy tax cheats.

Without efficient and fair tax collection, “How are we going to pay for things?” noted Priscilla Marco, president of a statewide SOAR chapter in New York.

Marco, an activist who’s long supported pro-worker candidates, said the Republican attempts to hurt working families and damage the economy underscore the need to place the right people in public office.

“We have to have more Democrats elected at the national level, and then we can have a different conversation,” observed Marco, who recently worked on a petition drive to save Social Security and Medicare.

“This is the best deal he could get given the circumstances,” she said of Biden. “He and his people delivered.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Workers at Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Georgia, launched a union drive to secure better wages, work-life balance, and a voice on the job.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The company resisted them. History defied them. Geography worked against them.

But they stood together, believed in themselves, and achieved a historic victory that’s reverberating throughout the South.

About 1,400 workers at the electric bus manufacturer voted overwhelmingly in May 2023 to join the United Steelworkers (USW), reflecting the rise of collective power in a part of the country where bosses and right-wing politicians long contrived to foil it.

“It’s just time for a change,” explained Rinardo Cooper, a member of USW Local 572 and a paper machine operator at Graphic Packaging in Macon, Georgia.

Cooper, who assisted the workers at Blue Bird with their union drive, expects more Southerners to follow suit even if they face their own uphill battles.

Given the South’s pro-corporate environment, it’s no surprise that Georgia has one of the nation’s lowest union membership rates, 4.4 percent. North Carolina’s rate is even lower, at 2.8 percent. And South Carolina’s is 1.7 percent.

Many corporations actually choose to locate in the South because the low union density enables them to pay poor wages, skimp on safety, and perpetuate the system of oppression.

In a 2019 study, “The Double Standard at Work,” the AFL-CIO found that even European-based companies with good records in their home countries take advantage of workers they employ in America’s South.

They’ve “interfered with freedom of association, launched aggressive campaigns against employees’ organizing attempts, and failed to bargain in good faith when workers choose union representation,” noted the report, citing, among other abuses, Volkswagen’s union-busting efforts at a Tennessee plant.

“They keep stuffing their pockets and paying pennies on the dollar,” Cooper said of companies cashing in at workers’ expense.

The consequences are dire.

States with low union membership have significantly higher poverty, according to a 2021 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Riverside. Georgia’s 14 percent poverty rate, for example, is among the worst in the country.

However, the tide is turning as workers increasingly see union membership as a clear path forward, observed Cooper, who left his own job at Blue Bird several months before the union win because the grueling schedule left him little time to spend with family.

Now, as a union paper worker, he not only makes higher wages than he did at Blue Bird but also benefits from safer working conditions and a voice on the job. And with the USW holding the company accountable, he’s free to take the vacation and other time off he earns.

Cooper’s story helped to inspire the bus company workers’ quest for better lives. But they also resolved to fight for their fair share as Blue Bird increasingly leans on their knowledge, skills, and dedication in the coming years.

The company stands to land tens of millions in subsidies from President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other federal programs aimed at putting more electric vehicles on the roads, supercharging the manufacturing economy, and supporting good jobs.

These goals are inextricably linked, as Biden made clear in a statement congratulating the bus company workers on their USW vote. “The fact is: The middle class built America,” he said. “And unions built the middle class.”

Worker power is spreading not only in manufacturing but across numerous industries in the South.

About 500 ramp agents, truck drivers, and other workers at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina also voted in May to form a union. Workers in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2022 unionized the first Starbucks in the South.

And first responders in Virginia and utility workers in Georgia and Kentucky also formed unions in early 2023, while workers at Lowe’s in Louisiana launched groundbreaking efforts to unionize the home-improvement giant.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to tell any worker at any manufacturing place here that the route you need to take is the union. That’s the only fairness you’re going to get,” declared Anthony Ploof, who helped to lead dozens of co-workers at Carfair Composites USA into the USW in 2023.

Workers at the Anniston, Alabama, branch of the company make fiberglass-reinforced polymer components for vehicles, including hybrid and electric buses. Like all workers, they decided to unionize to gain a seat at the table and a means of holding their employer accountable.

Instead of fighting the union effort, as many companies do, Carfair remained neutral so the workers could exercise their will. In the end, 98 percent voted to join the USW, showing that workers overwhelmingly want unions when they’re free to choose without bullying, threats, or retaliation.

“It didn’t take much here,” said Ploof, noting workers had little experience with unions but educated themselves about the benefits and quickly came to a consensus on joining the USW.

“It’s reaching out from Carfair,” he added, noting workers at other companies in the area have approached him to ask, “How is that working out? How do we organize?”

As his new union brothers and sisters at Blue Bird prepare to negotiate their first contract, Cooper hopes to get involved in other organizing drives, lift up more workers, and continue changing the trajectory of the South.

“We just really need to keep putting the message out there, letting people know that there is a better way than what the employers are wanting you to believe,” he said.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Dominick Sapien’s patient threw up during cardiac arrest, and he instinctively grabbed a suction tool to clear the man’s airway.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The device failed to turn on, so Sapien picked up another. When it also failed, he reached for a third. When that one broke apart, a quick-thinking Sapien flipped the patient on his side and, with a fellow paramedic performing CPR, manually scooped the vomit out of the man’s mouth to keep him from choking.

The need for functioning equipment and safer working conditions prompted Sapien and his colleagues at Frontier Ambulance to join the United Steelworkers (USW) in February 2023, making them the first workers in decades to form a union in Wyoming.

They aren’t the only ones breaking barriers. Determined to secure good wages and a seat at the table, a growing number of workers are banding together and fighting back in industries and states that long attempted to silence them.

About 1,000 firefighters, paramedics, fire marshals, emergency dispatchers, and mechanics in Fairfax County, Virginia, overwhelmingly voted to unionize in November 2022, advancing working people’s fight in a state that’s tried to divide workers and deter union membership for decades. Now, the county must bargain with public workers for the first time in about 40 years.

Workers at TCGplayer, an online trading card marketplace, in March 2023 formed the first union at an eBay-owned company in the United States, helping to pave the way for others in the notoriously anti-labor tech industry.

And undergraduate student workers at the University of Oregon filed for a union election in April 2023 to combat low pay and other exploitation. They’re part of a wave of unionizing campaigns involving faculty and staff as well as undergraduate and graduate student workers at universities across the country.

“It’s a chance to change things for the better, and I think everybody really believed in that dream,” Sapien said of his own successful union drive in Wyoming, a so-called right-to-work state with relatively few union members right now.

States with right-to-work laws permit workers to receive all of the benefits of union representation without paying even a small fee for services. These laws, pushed by corporations and right-wing politicians, undermine worker solidarity and starve unions of the resources they need to bargain good contracts, pursue grievances, and otherwise fight for members.

But Sapien knows that he and his co-workers will forge a robust union and stand strong together, just as they have each other’s backs in areas so remote that they sometimes lose cell phone service or have to travel to patients via snowmobile.

The three dozen paramedics and emergency medical technicians work 48-hour shifts, staff three ambulance stations, and cover about 9,200 square miles, a territory more than seven times the size of Rhode Island.

“We didn’t unionize to spite the company or make a point. It’s because we genuinely care about each other and the patients,” explained Sapien, who formerly worked at a union-represented ambulance service in California and moved to Wyoming with his wife, Jessica, also a paramedic, because they relish the challenges of rural emergency medical services.

“I would hate to think I’d lose a patient because we didn’t have the tools that we needed,” he said, adding, “Nobody is going to know better than the people on the ground what the people on the ground need.”

Besides malfunctioning suction devices, he said, paramedics ran out of batteries for electronic stretchers and want input into medication ordering to ensure they have adequate supplies on hand before winter sets in each year.

They also plan to fight for safer working conditions, including a commonsense policy restricting non-emergency transports during blizzards, and improved vehicle maintenance, a concern since two wheels fell off an ambulance as two paramedics were out on the road.

“We can stop this,” Sapien recalled telling colleagues during the organizing drive.

The same desire for a voice on the job also motivates more and more museum workers to take a stand against a cultural-arts industry infamous for exploiting docents, curators, interpreters, and others on the front lines.

In March 2023, about 65 workers at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia joined the USW. Workers at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Wexner Center for the Arts also formed unions that same month.

Workers at Eastern State, a former prison that once housed Willie Sutton and Al Capone, cited concerns about low pay and unfair scheduling as well as the need for advancement opportunities and the freedom to raise issues without the risk of retaliation.

Just as Sapien and his colleagues see unionization as a way to provide ever-better patient care, workers at Eastern State say their input on issues like workplace safety will help to bolster the museum’s impact and reputation. The aging open-air complex requires constant maintenance, for example, and subjects both workers and visitors to dangerous temperatures at certain times of year.

“I love Eastern State, and I love the people I work with,” explained Annie Finnegan, a member of the visitor services staff. “It’s time to make our voices heard about safety conditions, especially during extreme weather.”

With public support for unions at record levels, activists expect still more workers to follow their example and unionize to build brighter futures.

Sapien recalled how unionization immediately changed the atmosphere at Frontier Ambulance and prompted management to begin treating workers with the respect they deserve for putting their lives on the line each day.

“My co-workers are great people,” he said. “They do this for the community.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

He was known to be aggressive and argumentative, the kind of patron who made others at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh branch uneasy.

But one day last year, the man walked into the building in a much darker mood, harassed a librarian, and threatened to kill her.

Fortunately, library workers had joined the United Steelworkers (USW) in 2019 and built safeguards into their first contract to address dangers exactly like this.

The librarian received a temporary transfer to another building. And the library system banned the patron, ensuring he wouldn’t turn up again either to look for the person he threatened or target somebody else.

April 28 is Workers Memorial Day in America and the Day of Mourning in Canada, a time to remember those killed, injured, or sickened at work. It’s also a day when union workers rededicate themselves to the fight for safer working conditions and renew their pledge to look out for one another, along with others in the workplace, leveraging all of the power that collective action provides.

“We are open to the public, which means everybody is welcome to come in, and we do our best to serve everybody,” explained David King, a steward for USW Local 9562 and a librarian in the music, film, and audio department at the system’s main location in Oakland.

“We’re proud of that. We’re sincerely proud that we’re one of the few truly public spaces still left. But that does come with some of these dangers,” he added, noting that library workers face patrons who create disruptions, brawl, carry in weapons, damage property, overdose in restrooms, and even stalk them.

Because library management failed to adequately address these risks, union members stood in solidarity together and negotiated a contract that not only provides temporary transfers for endangered workers but also includes notification procedures to alert workers at various branches when a patron is banned.

“That is a huge change from before we negotiated the contract,” King pointed out, noting that workers previously “had no recourse” if they were harassed. “They just had to put up with it. They just had to stay in the same location.”

The contract also establishes minimum staffing at the 19 branches to ensure the safety of workers and visitors, said King, noting some locations have delayed opening at times because of worker shortages.

And the union advocates for workers as other issues arise, such as when it forced repairs to the fire alarm system on the third floor of the Oakland building last summer, secured increased security after a student brawl and other violent incidents at another branch several months ago, and won systemwide protections at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Unionization gave us the power to say, ‘You need to listen to us,’” recalled Kate Buick, a Local 9562 steward who works at the North Side branch, noting the pandemic measures included remote work options, safe spacing of computers at every branch, safety walkthroughs of the buildings, and creation of a labor-management safety committee.

“Having that committee was a game-changer,” she said. “We at least knew there would be no retaliation and we could say what we wanted.”

Because they deliver these kinds of protections, unions help to ensure that workers return safely home at the end of their shifts.

A study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, found that union construction sites had significantly fewer health and safety violations than nonunion ones. Another study, led by researchers at George Washington University and other institutions, revealed that unionized nursing homes had much lower COVID-19 infection and death rates than nonunion facilities.

When incidents occur, unions fight to hold employers accountable. But the drive for safer working conditions needn’t be adversarial, as a recent collaboration between the USW and Safety-Kleen in East Chicago, Indiana, shows.

The union and company sometimes disagreed on various issues. But Local 1011 President Steven Serrano repeatedly pointed out the benefits of cooperation and responded enthusiastically a few months ago when Safety-Kleen, which provides environmental services to various industries, sought the union’s help on a new safety initiative.

The parties negotiated a memorandum of agreement that, among other improvements, convened a union-management health and safety committee, established union-management incident investigations, and empowered workers to unilaterally stop work when confronted with hazardous conditions or processes.

The union’s involvement boosts the company’s efforts to obtain Voluntary Protection Program recognition from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

And it built solidarity among the 80 or so USW members at Safety-Kleen, who belong to Local 1011 along with hundreds of workers from the nearby Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant.

“Now, they have a seat at the table,” said Serrano, noting workers understand the dangers of their workplace better than anyone else. “Now, they have a voice.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Gregory Washington joined the Marines at 18 and fought in the Gulf War, only to return—traumatized, unemployed, adrift—to an America that seemed as unfamiliar and daunting to him as the places he encountered overseas.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

It took Washington years to find a family-sustaining job, secure his disability benefits, and reacclimate to civilian life.

Now, he’s a leader in his local union and determined to help forge a smoother path for others who served. He and fellow members of the United Steelworkers (USW) are advocating for state laws requiring employers to post official notices of the health, social, and other services available to support veterans as they build new lives on the homefront.

New York enacted its version of the workplace poster law, written with USW members’ input, on January 1, 2023. Union members continue working to advance similar legislation in Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states.

“At the end of the day, we want to readjust. We want to work. We want to take care of our families,” observed Washington, vice president of USW Local 13-1, which represents hundreds of workers at the Pemex oil refinery and other workplaces in southeastern Texas.

“Sometimes, nobody even talks to veterans. They get out, and that’s it,” said Washington, recalling the difficulty he had battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while finding a way forward on his own.

Washington, who took part in the February 1991 battle that dislodged Iraqi forces from Kuwait International Airport, discovered that the hyper-vigilance, lightning-quick responsiveness, and other traits that kept him alive in the Marines sometimes disconcerted people at home. He struggled to sustain friendships with nonveterans, who appreciated his service but couldn’t relate to his experiences.

And as he wrestled with how to translate his military skills into civilian employment, Washington fell into low-paying security jobs that barely enabled him to support his growing family.

Many veterans experience similar hardships. As many as 46 percent of recent veterans with combat experience struggle to readjust after discharge, and those like Washington with PTSD “are among the most likely to say their transition to civilian life was difficult,” according to Pew Research Center.

Yet at the same time, the resources available to help veterans confront these very challenges routinely go unused.

For example, a research team led by Penn State University studied about 10,000 veterans and found that only 11 percent enrolled in social support programs within three months of discharge. Fewer than half took advantage of legal or housing aid, while only 60 percent registered for vocational assistance, according to the study, “Going It Alone,” published in 2019 by the Journal of Social Service Research.

Researchers determined that those most in need of support were the least likely to seek it and stressed that “veterans need clear information about available programs” and “where to locate them.”

It’s exactly that gap that USW members intend to fill with their advocacy for informational workplace posters. The Texas bill, sponsored by state senator César Blanco and state representative Chris Turner, would require employers to put up state-issued posters that outline the various tax benefits, health services, and education and training opportunities available to veterans, along with information on how to access them.

“A lot of people need to be educated,” confirmed Washington, recalling how much sooner he could have put his own life on track if he’d seen a workplace listing of the resources available to veterans.

He received the assistance he needed only because of persistence and the decision to move his family from Louisiana to Texas for a fresh start. Washington found supportive coworkers at the oil refinery, became active in the USW, and connected with the Texas Veterans Commission, which secured his disability benefits and provided other resources.

“It changed my life,” he said, noting employers have a vested interest in ensuring veterans access the services they need.

Without help, some veterans never make it, observed Justin Rankin, a member of USW Local 12460, noting the USW-backed legislation will help save lives by requiring that the workplace posters also provide contact information for the national Veterans Crisis Line.

Rankin, who works at U.S. Salt in Watkins Glen, New York, served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan and remains a member of the New York Army National Guard. He’s lost numerous military friends to suicide and supports others who want to talk, saying, “I’ve sat up three, four, five, six hours talking to a buddy.”

After completing active-duty service with the Army, Rankin once went to a counseling center at a college he attended. “They didn’t know what to do with me,” he said of counselors accustomed to dealing with “bad grades, bad breakups,” not combat trauma.

“It’s hard for veterans to ask for help,” and that reluctance underscores the importance of connecting current and former service members with the right care the first time they ask for it, Rankin said.

By providing information for the crisis line, he noted, the New York workplace posters offer immediate access to a special level of assistance that veterans established to help fellow veterans.

While Washington and Rankin will continue looking out for veterans who approach them for help, they see informational posters as a critical tool for saving those who might otherwise never ask for support or signal that they need it.

Rankin choked up as he recalled being “blindsided” by the suicide of one friend who seemed to be doing well.

“It’s huge that this legislation passed in New York,” he said. “But veterans in other states need it, too. We have to start helping each other out.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Among the handful of neurologically impaired patients in Judy Danella’s care one day in March 2023 were three so ill that they struggled just to swallow.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

She fed each of them in turn, delivering spoonful after spoonful of pureed food, patiently nourishing them toward better health even as she herself was stretched thinner by the minute in a facility that’s chronically shorthanded.

Danella and her union coworkers at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, wrestle every day with the understaffing crisis straining America’s healthcare system to the breaking point.

Healthcare employers across the country long refused to hire adequate numbers of nurses, certified nursing assistants, dietary workers, and other essential staff, preferring to push skeleton crews to the bone and put profits over patients.

But now, the same healthcare workers who battled COVID-19 are fighting for the safe staffing levels needed to protect their communities on a daily basis and prevent the already-fragile care system from collapsing in the next pandemic.

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois introduced legislation in Congress on March 30 to establish mandatory minimum staffing levels for nurses at hospitals nationwide. But in the meantime, citing the ever-greater urgency, union workers continue advocating for similar measures on a state-by-state basis.

Danella and fellow members of the United Steelworkers (USW), for example, will rally with workers from other unions at the New Jersey statehouse May 11 to demand passage of bills establishing minimum staffing levels for registered nurses in hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and state psychiatric facilities.

“You want to give the patient the best care you can,” explained Danella, a registered nurse and president of USW Local 4-200, which represents about 1,650 registered nurses at the Robert Wood Johnson facility, a Level 1 trauma center.

The legislation, already introduced in the state Senate and General Assembly, would require one registered nurse for every four patients in an emergency department, one for every two patients in intensive care, and one for every five patients in a medical/surgical unit, among other provisions.

The bills also would give the nurses a voice in designing and implementing staffing systems that model future needs, deploy “floaters” to cover gaps, and provide further adjustments to better serve patients needing extra attention. That’s the kind of flexibility and forward thinking essential to providing proper care for all patients, especially on days when Danella needs up to 90 minutes just to feed three people.

“You prioritize your work,” said Danella, explaining how she handles the constant stream of text messages alerting her to more tasks assigned to her throughout her shift. “You just somehow get through the day, and you manage.”

Although Danella relies on her experience to handle whatever the hospital throws at her, industry-wide understaffing puts patients around the country at risk.

In Washington, for example, another state where union members are fighting for safe staffing levels, 48 percent of healthcare workers in a recent survey cited incidents of patient harm or deaths due to understaffing.

And in Michigan, where union workers have spent years fighting for minimum staffing ratios, 42 percent of nurses recently reported knowing of patients who died because of short-staffing. In 2020, nurses at a Detroit hospital filed a lawsuit claiming they were illegally fired for pointing out that short-staffing contributed to dozens of unnecessary deaths in the emergency department.

The Safe Patient Care Act, legislation that would have required hospitals to meet minimum staffing levels for registered nurses, died in Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature during the 2022 session. Now, Jackie Anklam, president of USW Local 9899, hopes the Democratic majorities that took control of both chambers in January will enact minimum ratios for nurses and other groups of healthcare workers as well.

“It should be for all,” stressed Anklam, whose local represents hundreds of workers at Ascension St. Mary’s Hospital in Saginaw, noting union members in every department contribute to a collective lifesaving mission.

Anklam said current shortages force pharmacy technicians into brutally long days. Short-staffing also traps certified nursing assistants with high caseloads. And instead of hiring more environmental services workers, she said, the hospital increases workloads.

The staffing crisis affects not only hospitals but facilities across the continuum of care.

The USW and other unions want the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish minimum staffing levels at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, funded largely with federal dollars, that serve growing numbers of aging Americans.

The ratios would not only save lives but also decrease the amount of time residents wait for therapy as well as help dressing, bathing, and using the restroom.

In addition, Chris Sova, a registered nurse and president of USW Local 15301, said minimum staffing would help to address the stress that workers experience as they race to answer one call bell after another.

“In the background, it’s a constant dinging,” said Sova, whose members at Bay County Medical Care Facility in Essexville, Michigan, take pride—despite their own staffing challenges—in answering call bells at high speed.

“It’s like the water dripping in the middle of the night,” Sova said. “It’s just one of the many things wearing on you.”

While workers receive extra pay because of short staffing, he added, “they just want more help.”

Danella knows that the hospital industry will continue to oppose staffing minimums and cut corners to fatten their bottom lines. But she said union workers refuse to back down because continuing shortages will only exacerbate staff turnover and put even more lives at risk.

“It’s just a domino effect,” she said.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

The United Steelworkers (USW) mounted tireless battles for fair trade and other lifelines that helped to keep McLouth Steel open during the 1980s, enabling Jay McMurran and thousands of other Michigan workers to raise families and build pensions amid one of the nation’s worst economic crises.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Recognizing that other workers need the same kind of strength behind them, McMurran resolved to fight back when Republicans rammed union-gutting "right-to-work" (RTW) legislation through the state legislature in 2012.

He and other union supporters and their allies worked relentlessly for years to oust the corporate toadies and elect pro-worker lawmakers instead. Their long struggle culminated in victory on March 21, 2023, when new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate voted to repeal the deceptively named RTW laws, restoring workers’ full power to bargain fair contracts and safe working conditions.

Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer has since signed the legislation, which represents the latest in a string of victories for workers mobilizing to build strength across the country.

No one in America is ever forced to join a union, and no union wants workers to join against their will. Yet a union is legally obligated to serve all workers in its bargaining unit.

Many states allow unions to charge nonmembers a small fee to help cover the costs of representation. But in some states, RTW laws pushed by corporations and anti-worker groups enable nonmembers to receive union services for free.

These laws intentionally divide workers, erode the solidarity that's the foundation of union strength, and starve unions of the resources needed for effective bargaining, training, and other essential purposes—all to the boss's benefit.

"'Right to work' is simply a union-busting scam that the Republicans dress up as 'choice,'" observed McMurran, a longtime USW member who worked at McLouth Steel for 27 years.

"It weakens the local union," he said. "It weakens every worker's position when you get into collective bargaining, when you get into grievance hearings, when you get into arbitrations. The boss knows your weaknesses, and he exploits them."

It's no surprise that workers burdened by RTW laws make significantly lower wages than their counterparts in other states. They're also less likely to have employer-provided health insurance and retirement plans than other workers.

At the same time, workers in RTW states face a higher risk of dying on the job because they lack the strong, unified voice needed to fight for workplace safety.

"Everything I have is because I was a Steelworker," said McMurran, who recalled that unshakable solidarity among his coworkers not only ensured good contracts and safe working conditions but also kept their employer in business.

"The steel mill that I came out of was in financial trouble for 13 years, and the Steelworkers fought to keep the place open nearly every day of those 13 years," said McMurran, citing the busloads of USW members who converged on Washington, D.C., in the 1980s to demand support for the company. "We actually kept the place going so more people qualified for pensions and employer-sponsored health care. We did some good things there."

Sadly, despite successes like that, Michigan's GOP legislators conspired with corporations and other anti-union interests to undermine worker power.

McMurran was among the 10,000 protesters who packed the statehouse in a last-ditch effort to stop Republicans from pushing RTW through a lame-duck session during the 2012 holiday season.

Union members lost that skirmish but won the war.

After Republicans passed the legislation over the protesters' objections, McMurran said, workers and their allies launched a "long-game" plan to reverse it.

Workers helped pass a 2018 referendum that took redistricting out of the hands of partisan political hacks and put fair-minded citizens in charge of the process. New, equitably drawn legislative districts enabled voters to elect pro-worker lawmakers willing to represent them rather than corporations.

And those pro-worker majorities, in turn, speedily acted to end RTW. For McMurran, the victory highlighted both the power of collective action and the importance of electing the right people to office.

Workers in other states also are beating back RTW amid growing support for organized labor and a pandemic that underscored Americans' need for good wages, affordable health care, and the other benefits that unions deliver.

For example, even as Republicans in Michigan united behind a failed defense of RTW, several GOP legislators in Montana helped to kill RTW legislation in that state in February 2023. The opponents included Republican Senator Jason Small, a member of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, who described his 26 years of union membership as a "heck of an opportunity" in his life.

"It has nothing to do with red or blue. It’s what's right for people and their families," explained Curtis Schomer, vice president of USW Local 11-0001.

Schomer, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for the Montana House in 2022, repeatedly traveled to Helena, the state capital, to rally against RTW and testify against the harmful legislation.

He noted that a strong union gives him and his 1,300 coworkers at the Sibanye-Stillwater mining complex the power to take safety concerns directly to management and address problems immediately. In a dangerous industry like mining, he noted, that kind of voice saves lives and ensures workers return home safely at the end of their shifts.

Schomer expects pro-business interests to continue to push RTW in Montana. But he predicted those efforts will fall flat in communities that not only have a rich legacy of labor activism but also continue to appreciate the benefits unions provide.

"Our unions do a lot for our communities," Schomer said. "They especially do a lot on workplace safety. People see that."

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Hundreds of Boston school bus drivers stood to lose their jobs when COVID-19 closed the city's schools in 2020.

But instead of giving up on drivers, André François and other leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8751 collaborated with Marty Walsh, then the mayor of Boston, to not only avoid layoffs but also empower the workers to serve on the front lines of the health crisis.

Union members loaded their buses with the food usually served in school cafeterias and delivered meals to students and the elderly, helping some of the city’s most vulnerable residents through the darkest days of the pandemic.

That creative and powerful advocacy for ordinary people also defined Walsh's tenure as U.S. secretary of labor and fueled his fight to build an economy that works for all, observed François, the Local 8751 president.

"He was fair to labor," François said of Walsh, who just resigned from his position in President Joe Biden's Cabinet to head the National Hockey League Players' Association. "He was understanding. You could call and talk to him about your issues. He listened."

Walsh, who credits a union laborer's job with lifting his immigrant father into the middle class, dedicated his life to extending similar opportunities to others.

As the first labor secretary in decades to carry a union card, he adopted the hands-on approach that François witnessed in Boston and returned the department to the worker-centered mission it lost during the previous administration.

In the process, he also helped Biden turn a pandemic-battered economy into a new era of shared prosperity.

Just a few months after joining the Biden administration, for example, Walsh helped push Congress into passing a historic infrastructure package that's supporting millions of good union jobs. He even joined USW members at a rally in Burns Harbor, Indiana, to promote the legislation.

"We have an opportunity right now to buy American and build America like never before," Walsh, the former leader of the Boston Building and Construction Trades Council, told the gathering.

Walsh helped fight off Republican efforts to kill Trade Adjustment Assistance, a lifeline for workers harmed by unfair trade.

He turned the Labor Department's website into a one-stop shop for labor organizing and warned companies like Starbucks and Amazon to stop harassing workers who want to form unions and instead "sit down" with them.

Walsh also intervened to help striking Massachusetts nurses win a contract with safer staffing levels, and he walked a picket line in Pennsylvania with Kellogg's workers who ultimately reached a fair agreement.

"We support our allies," Denny Mitchell, a retired member of USW Local 135L in Buffalo, New York, said of Walsh's solidarity with fellow union members. "He lives it. He's not just talking. He keeps trying to help the middle class."

Mitchell personally experienced Walsh's rapport with working people on a sweltering summer day several years ago.

After spending many hours campaigning for pro-worker candidates ahead of a pivotal election, Mitchell let a friend coax him into attending a reception with elected officials from Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Walsh entered the room and, walking past a sea of people in formal attire, made a beeline for Mitchell in his tennis shoes and sweat-stained USW shirt. He wrapped Mitchell in a bear hug and thanked him for working on his mayoral campaign.

"That was a moment in my life I'll always cherish," Mitchell said.

While Walsh helped workers gain greater control over their futures, the battle for fair pay and decent working conditions continues.

Almost as soon as Walsh announced his departure, for example, Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash renewed their fight against a proposed Labor Department rule that would force the companies to treat drivers as employees, rather than contractors, and provide essentials like sick pay and workers' compensation.

But these greedy companies may as well just give up.

They'd face another tireless opponent in Julie Su, Biden's nominee to succeed Walsh. As secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, Su supported and enforced a state law protecting these very same kinds of workers.

Before that, as California's labor commissioner, she launched the state's "Wage Theft is a Crime" campaign to help workers assert their rights when predatory employers cheat them out of overtime, try to pay less than the minimum wage, or force them to work off the clock.

And Su championed a landmark California law requiring hospitals to implement violence prevention plans and take other steps to stem the rising tide of assaults on healthcare workers, recalled Micheal Barnett, president of USW Local 7600, which represents thousands of members at Kaiser Permanente facilities in the southern part of the state.

After supporting enactment of the law, Su went further, working to ensure consistent and rigorous implementation across the state while holding employers accountable for lapses.

"It's all about the enforcement of the law. Julie understands that," Barnett said. "That's where she was really instrumental for us."

Healthcare workers across the country need an ally like Su right now as the USW and other unions push Congress to enact a national version of California's violence prevention law and increase safety industrywide.

"We believe she'd made a great, passionate labor secretary," Barnett said, adding that her attention to workplace safety would benefit workers in many fields.

Walsh safeguarded labor rights at a time the pandemic underscored how much workers need decent pay, affordable health care, and a voice on the job. Su's confirmation would not only keep employers from chipping away at the gains made during Walsh's tenure but also help workers seize even greater control over their futures.

"I think Walsh kind of reopened the door for us—for working families, for union members, for prospective union members," Mitchell said. "I would like to make sure the door stays open."

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Brad Greve said he and other expedition leaders repeatedly told the group of Boy Scouts to watch out for a section of stream where the water picked up speed and swept over rapids into the lake below.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

But two of the boys forgot the warnings and let their canoe drift perilously close to the drop-off anyway. Realizing their mistake in the nick of time, they paddled furiously against the stiffening current and made it to the streambank rattled but safe.

That near-accident a few years ago, Greve said, underscores the vulnerability of young teens. And it fuels Greve's anger at Republicans who want to gut child labor laws and fill dangerous jobs with still-maturing high schoolers, even at the risk of working them to death.

Greve vehemently opposes a proposal moving through Iowa's Republican-controlled legislature that would allow 14-year-olds to work in industrial freezers, meatpacking plants, and industrial laundry operations. The legislation also would put 15-year-olds to work on certain kinds of assembly lines and allow them to hoist up to 50 pounds.

In some cases, it even would permit young teens to work mining and construction jobs and let them use power-driven meat slicers and food choppers.

Just three years ago, a 16-year-old in Tennessee fell more than 11 stories to his death while working construction on a hotel roof. Another 16-year-old lost an arm that same year while cleaning a meat grinder at a Tennessee supermarket.

But these preventable tragedies mean nothing to Iowa legislators bent on helping greedy employers pad their bottom lines at kids’ expense.

"They make impulsive decisions and do things without thinking, just because they're young. They don’t know what they don't know," said Greve, a Davenport, Iowa, resident and member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), explaining how the legislation puts youths in harm's way.

The legislation also would allow employers to force kids into significantly longer work days—until 9 p.m. during the school year and 11 p.m. during the summer.

More hours at work would rob kids of time needed for studying and for the extracurricular activities that help mold them into productive, responsible adults.

For example, Greve, a Scout leader for more than 20 years, helps to lead 50-mile canoe trips on Minnesota's Boundary Waters that test teens’ mettle while teaching them essential skills. He also assists Scouts with Eagle Projects requiring them to plan, fund, and lead community service projects.

"It's not about teens needing more jobs," he added of the watered-down child labor legislation championed by groups like the Iowa Restaurant Association, Iowa Grocery Industry Association, and Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce. "It's about businesses wanting cheap labor or more labor than they can currently get because they don't want to pay reasonable wages or give any benefits."

COVID-19 prompted millions of Americans to ditch jobs lacking decent working conditions, sick leave, and affordable health care. The meatpacking industry, among many others, hemorrhaged workers after deliberately putting them at risk to protect profits during the pandemic.

Now, rather than correct course and provide the quality jobs needed to attract adults, Greve observed, companies want their Republican cronies to "throw them a bone" and widen access to child labor.

Minnesota Republicans want to let 16- and 17-year-olds work construction. GOP legislators in Ohio are pushing legislation to expand teens' work hours. In 2022, labor unions and Democratic officials in Wisconsin beat back a Republican proposal to lengthen work days for teens in that state.

The Iowa legislation is particularly onerous because it would exempt employers from civil liability in the event of a youth's injury or death on the job—even in cases of employer negligence—if the teen was participating in a school-approved "work-based learning program."

That will only encourage employers to skimp on training and supervision, even though young workers continually need both, observed Greve, who closely monitored safety conditions at Arconic's Davenport Works while president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 105.

Even worse, efforts to push kids into hazardous workplaces come at a time when employers already flout child labor laws at record rates, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which has documented alarming spikes each year since 2015.

Employers thumb their noses at the law because they often get away with it for long periods and face only token penalties when caught.

After the 16-year-old fell off the hotel roof, for example, Tennessee officials determined that the company not only illegally put the teen in harm's way but also worked him more hours than allowed and cheated dozens of other workers out of tens of thousands of dollars in overtime pay. Adding insult to injury, the company vowed to appeal the $122,000 fine it received for the teen’s death.

Greve knows that eviscerating child labor laws will disproportionately hurt the poor, migrants, victims of trafficking, and other at-risk youths who have little choice but to work when and where they're told.

The news agency Reuters in 2022 found migrant youths and other children as young as 12 working at Alabama companies supplying the auto industry.

And the New York Times reported on February 25 that the widespread illegal employment of minors from poor and migrant families had reached epidemic proportions, reflecting a "new economy of exploitation." The Times found that employers subjected thousands of kids in this shadow workforce to some of the deadliest jobs in the country, including work in slaughterhouses and sawmills.

"Why would you want to weaken the law when you can see companies already taking advantage?" said Greve, noting the importance of electing pro-worker, pro-child politicians to state and federal office. "The law should be strengthened."

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Mark Glyptis and dozens of other union leaders went into contract negotiations with Cleveland-Cliffs in 2022 determined not only to win wage and benefit enhancements for their coworkers but also to protect thousands of family-sustaining steel mill jobs for years to come.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The United Steelworkers (USW) negotiating team ultimately delivered a historic contract requiring the company to invest $4 billion in 13 union-represented facilities, including about $100 million at the Weirton, West Virginia, mill where Glyptis and his colleagues rely on ever more sophisticated equipment to make precision tin plate.

Unions fight for financial commitments like these to safeguard workers' sweat equity—the time and labor they invest in their workplaces for decades at a stretch. Capital upgrades keep employers accountable and plants viable, preserving family-sustaining jobs while also laying the groundwork for future growth.

"Steel mills are being built across the world, and we're definitely competing on a worldwide basis," observed Glyptis, president of USW Local 2911, noting the overseas facilities feature the "most modern technology."

"We're the best steelworkers in the world. We can compete. But we have to keep up with capital investments," continued Glyptis, who helped to represent about 12,000 USW members from six states in the talks with Cleveland-Cliffs in 2022.

Glyptis and other Local 2911 members fought for new equipment that they need to produce "perfectly flat and flawless" tin plate for food containers.

Based on members' input, other local unions—supplying the military, highway contractors, aerospace, and numerous other industries—went into negotiations with their own requirements for upgrades.

Members overwhelmingly ratified a new, four-year contract last fall. The vote reflected their satisfaction with the $4 billion in investments—to be allocated among the 13 worksites—as much as it did the 20 percent raises and benefit enhancements the agreement provides.

"You can have the best health care in the country or in the world, but if you can't compete because of technological deficiencies, you're going to be an also-ran," Glyptis pointed out. "Maintaining a competitive facility is just as important."

"It all goes into a decision about whether this is a fair contract. It would be difficult to have a contract passed if it didn't have a commitment to capital investments attached," he said, adding that the company continues hiring many younger workers who see the upgrades as crucial to raising families and putting down roots.

Unions also negotiate capital investments to protect workers from companies that might otherwise abandon plants on a whim or run them to failure while wringing out every last penny in profit.

"They don't have to live with the long-term impact of what they do. We do. Union workers do," declared Andrew Worby, president of USW Local 2-209, referring to "profit-taker" CEOs who line their pockets on workers' backs before moving on to their next jobs.

Once a company commits resources to a location, it’s more likely to stick around, said Worby, recalling that he and his coworkers at the Harley-Davidson plant in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, upped their demands for capital investments after a cavalier executive threatened to move the facility during a contract dispute.

The local's most recent contract requires Harley-Davidson to invest $65 million in the Menomonee Falls powertrain manufacturing site over five years. The company also has to invest another $10 million at a Tomahawk, Wisconsin, plant where workers are represented by USW Local 460.

The impact is already evident. The company recently announced that workers in Wisconsin are "tooling up and readying to produce" the powertrains for a new line of electric motorcycles.

"There's a much bigger and broader picture to the impact of a union contract," said Worby. "It doesn't just affect the union members. It affects the families. It affects the community. It affects the state we're in."

The security provided by union-won investments means that "a new worker, instead of renting, is willing to buy a house," he explained. "Now he’s paying property taxes. He's going to send his kids to the school district. He's going to buy a refrigerator from the local appliance guy. It's huge."

When companies do threaten to close worksites, unions step up to preserve jobs and protect communities.

The USW, for example, intervened when Domtar announced plans to close a Kingsport, Tennessee, paper mill where union members made uncoated free sheet. Some workers, including USW Local 12943 President Keith Kiker, worked there for decades.

Union leaders knew Domtar wanted to enter the recycled containerboard market, so they successfully pushed the company to overhaul and reopen the Kingsport facility for that new product line.

The union's advocacy resulted in a $350 million investment, saving about 150 jobs and ensuring a competitive facility for decades to come. Workers produced their first roll of recycled containerboard in January 2023.

"Everybody who wanted to come back got to come back," said Kiker, noting company officials "knew what they had" in a skilled and dedicated workforce committed to ensuring a successful mill conversion.

"This has been a good place to work. It’s still the best insurance in the region," he added, noting other companies in the Kingsport area must match USW-negotiated health benefits to retain their own workers.

Worby and his coworkers at Harley-Davidson see "a lot of new equipment coming in" right now, giving them the sense of security that they sought in the last round of contract talks. But they realize that the fight for facility investments, like the battle for fair wages and benefits, never ends.

"You want to keep the positive energy flowing," Worby said. "Longevity is very important to us."

Families from miles around lined up outside the United Steelworkers (USW) hall in Tonawanda, New York, a few years ago, eager for a share of the 30,000 books, from biographies to sci-fi thrillers, that Tom O’Shei and other union members handed out for free.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The hugely popular giveaway was a logical undertaking for a civic-minded union that recognized a local need and understood that sharing knowledge would help build a stronger community from the grassroots up.

But while union members like O’Shei continue to harness the power of the written word to unify and bolster their hometowns, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opted to weaponize books in an attempt to divide and dominate.

Under the right-wing Republican’s censorship, classroom libraries remain off limits to students until state-trained watchdogs vet the books to ensure they conform to DeSantis’s politics of hate.

Local school boards across Florida ostensibly have the final word on approving or banning instructional materials, but they know that taking a responsible and inclusive approach means incurring the vindictive DeSantis’s wrath.

Adding insult to injury, teachers face criminal prosecution, thousands of dollars in fines, and five years in prison for giving children access to unapproved titles. A conviction under this draconian policy also threatens a teacher’s career and voting rights.

“To me, it’s almost like trying to exercise mind control,” O’Shei, president of Local 135L, said of DeSantis’s efforts to police libraries and indoctrinate students. “Anybody who wants to ban books doesn’t have your best interest at heart.”

“When I see something like that, I would encourage kids to go to the community library and find out what they don’t want you to read,” said O’Shei.

Local 135L, which represents hundreds of workers at the Sumitomo plant in Tonawanda, considers community building an essential part of USW membership.

“We have to be good members of the community because we’re lucky enough to have a good living because of the union,” O’Shei tells new workers at the tire plant. “We want to make the community around us a better place to live, too.”

Although neighbors welcomed the diapers, coats, toys, food, and other items the union distributed over the years, the book giveaway—open to all families—proved a runaway hit.

Children and parents hungrily pored over the volumes that Local 135L, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the Kenmore Teachers Association teamed up to distribute first at the union hall and then at a local market and to schools and nonprofits.

While DeSantis intends to control what students read, the union members aimed to present families with as many topics, voices, and choices as possible.

“No indoctrination here,” O’Shei said of the event, which included biographies on figures as diverse as abolitionist Harriet Tubman, labor leader Cesar Chavez, and former President John Adams.

The assault on classroom libraries represents one front in DeSantis’s scorched-earth campaign to divide communities and marginalize certain Americans.

He also attacked the College Board’s new Advanced Placement course on African American studies, banned dozens of math textbooks because of references to discrimination and other racial issues, rolled out plans to scrap diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at state colleges, and dictated how educators talk about race and LGBTQ+ issues.

“He’s gone off the deep end. Everything he’s done is just red meat for the MAGA crowd. It’s disgusting,” observed Jim Centner, a Florida resident and District 9 coordinator for the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR).

Outraged Floridians are joining forces to roll back these extremist policies.

But in the meantime, “what he’s doing is whitewashing history and taking us back to pre-civil rights,” Centner pointed out. “It’s like we’re going back to the ’60s here. It’s going to hold the students in this state back from experiencing life. It’s very divisive, and it’s destroying education in this state.”

Such policies outrage Ayrel Evans, a member of USW Local 8599 and a library specialist for the Fontana (California) Unified School District, who’s dedicated her life to empowering children from diverse backgrounds.

Evans marks Black History Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, and other celebrations of diversity to validate her students’ own experiences, introduce them to new perspectives, and encourage them to dream big.

In addition to working with students from many racial and ethnic backgrounds, she meets the needs of children with disabilities, children in foster homes, those just beginning to learn English, and those hailing from diverse family structures.

And she regularly connects students of all backgrounds with books that help them make sense of current events unfolding close to home and around the world.

“You can see in their eyes that they want to know more information,” explained Evans, noting that book banning robs children of opportunities to make their own decisions and ultimately sets them up for failure in a globally competitive environment.

“We’re not preparing our students for the future. We’re not preparing them to see something different outside their bubble,” she said. “With books, there’s an opportunity for conversation. If you take away the books, no conversation is being had.”

Evans has great empathy for Florida educators and families stifled by DeSantis’s extremism. If that kind of threat ever faced her district, she said, “I’d be on the front lines fighting against that.”

“Working around this much information puts me in a position where I’m always learning,” she added. “I never want to be in a situation where I think I know everything. That’s my desire and my goal for students.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Cliff Carlton was the 10th of 11 children and one of three still living at home when his father, a coal miner, died unexpectedly at 67.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Only his dad’s Social Security benefits, along with vegetables from the family’s small farm in southwestern Virginia, kept the household afloat during the lean years that followed.

That battle for survival made Carlton a lifelong champion of Social Security and a tireless opponent of the Republicans in Congress who keep trying to kill this lifeline for the middle class.

“It’s not a gift. It’s money that we’re due,” explained Carlton, vice president of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 8-UR2 and president of the Virginia Alliance for Retired Americans.

“We put money into it. We deserve it back,” continued Carlton, 70, a retired tire manufacturing worker and longtime member of the United Steelworkers (USW) who’s attended rallies and lobbied Congress on behalf of Social Security for 30 years.

Republicans long hoped to privatize Social Security, preferring to gamble Americans’ futures on the stock market rather than force the wealthy to pay their fair share of the taxes needed to sustain the program. Fortunately, congressional Democrats, union members, and other Americans torpedoed these schemes.

But now there’s a new threat. To secure enough votes to become speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy toadied to extremist Republicans whose demands for radical budget cuts once again put Social Security and Medicare at risk.

Pro-corporate Republicans openly plot to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age, moves that would force millions of Americans to work longer and delay their retirements. Some Republicans even want to gut the current funding formula, slashing payments to Americans with other income, regardless of how much they pay into the program.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare warns that this kind of con, called means-testing, would end Social Security as Americans know it and take benefits even from those with “very modest incomes.”

“If you lose something, you don’t ever get it back,” observed Carlton, who fears that Republican toying with Social Security will break seniors already living on the margins amid skyrocketing medical costs and mounting bills stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to providing a buffer against unexpected health crises, Social Security is the only resource many retirees have when they outlive the nest eggs they accumulated during their working years.

“My grandmother is 102 years old. She retired at the age of 65 the year I was born, so I’ve never known her except in a retired state. She still lives on her own,” said Mike Budd, 37, a Marine Corps veteran and member of USW Local 12775, who credits Social Security with enabling his grandma, a former bank teller, to maintain her independence and high quality of life for decades.

“In fact, that’s the reason I’m very passionate about keeping this program around,” said Budd, who works as a substation electrician at Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO).

Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate will continue to protect Social Security—and Medicare—from the Republicans who narrowly regained control of the House in November 2022. Still, the Republicans vow to stage a showdown over America’s debt and allow the nation to careen toward default in a reckless gambit to commandeer the spending cuts they want.

Ironically, many of the same Republicans bent on eviscerating Social Security have huge personal fortunes on top of congressional pensions and enjoy a level of financial security out of reach of most Americans.

“It’s certainly easy to tell people to make do with less when they have more,” noted Budd, chair of Local 12775’s Veterans of Steel Committee, who was deployed to Iraq three times from 2004 to 2009 as an aircraft mechanic with Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 14 (MALS-14).

“There were no millionaires deployed with me,” noted Budd, only “a lot of working-class people” who loved their country and believed in the American dream that Republicans now threaten.

Some Republicans attempt to soft-pedal their shenanigans by saying they won’t cut benefits for current recipients, only future retirees who would have “time to adjust” to the changes, likely by working longer.

That angers Budd, who’s been paying Social Security taxes since he was a 16-year-old with a summer job at an equipment rental company and expects the long-promised return on his ongoing investment.

He’s already laying the financial groundwork for his golden years, and those plans hinge on a robust Social Security program that will not only let him retire at a decent age but will also support him as well as it has his grandma should he also live to 102.

Instead of cutting essential programs, TJ Stephens said, he’d like to see Republicans agree to fairly tax uber-rich Americans who use dodgy loopholes to pay little or nothing now. And he’d like to see more wealthy tax cheats and deadbeats run to the ground.

Stephens, a member of USW Local 9231 and an electrician at the Cleveland-Cliffs complex in New Carlisle, Indiana, regards Social Security as America’s contract with working people—one as inviolable as the one he signed when he joined the Air Force at 19 and went off to serve as a satellite communications technician at Langley Air Force Base.

“Inhumane is the best word I can think of,” Stephens, 37, said of Republican plans to move the goalposts on those already paying into Social Security and force younger Americans to “work ourselves into the grave.”

Ultimately, Carlson predicted, public anger will stop the Republicans in their tracks. He’s planning to ratchet up his activism and get more retirees to join him.

“It makes a difference,” he said of Social Security. “It’s not something we’re going to give up without an extraordinary fight.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Matt Thomas was driving Interstate 75 through the Detroit area about two years ago when he caught his first glimpse of “dead” cars—the partially manufactured vehicles marooned on sprawling factory lots amid the shortage of microchips needed for the autos’ safety, entertainment, and GPS systems.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The sight sickened Thomas not only because his own set of wheels was getting along in years but also because he recognized that he and other union workers stand ready to meet America’s growing demand for ever more sophisticated chips.

Federal legislation enacted in August 2022 is finally empowering workers for this crucial role. The CHIPS and Science Act, which unions and their Democratic allies pushed through Congress, invests billions to ramp up semiconductor manufacturing across the country and build out the supply chains providing essential materials, parts, and components to chip makers.

That will end America’s dangerous overreliance on foreign chip producers, whose pandemic-related production disruptions and inability to meet surging demand continue to stymie production of new vehicles. Strengthening the nation’s semiconductor industry also will ensure a more reliable supply of the chips needed for many other kinds of consumer goods, along with communications networks, energy systems, and the military equipment essential for national security.

The legislation already sparked dozens of manufacturing projects with the potential to create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs all along supply chains.

“There’s no reason why we can’t have these made domestically. There’s no reason why we should have to depend on someone else for production,” said Thomas, a steward for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 12075-24, noting that he and his coworkers look for the legislation to boost demand for products like the semiconductor resin they make at a DuPont plant in Midland, Michigan.

Manufacturers continually strive to add brainpower to electronic devices, and the advanced packaging resin produced by Local 12075-24 members helps to accomplish this goal. Information on and among chips speeds “up and down, back and forth” with the resin, known as Cyclotene, explained Thomas.

These and other supply chain links are so critical to a robust semiconductor industry that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer chose a USW-represented glass plant in Canton, New York, as a backdrop for promoting the CHIPS and Science Act shortly after President Joe Biden signed the legislation in August.

“It’s incredibly important what our plant does,” said Anthony Badlam, president of USW Local 1026, whose members at the Corning facility make specialty glass that’s used as lenses in machines that imprint information on chips.

Because lasers degrade the lenses during the process, he added, “we’re always making new glass” for chip manufacturers.

Corning has indicated its interest in expanding operations at the Canton plant—a facility Schumer predicted will “play an integral role” in the growing semiconductor industry and help “lead and support the future of American manufacturing and tech leadership.”

“It’s all great news for New York,” said Badlam, noting that the CHIPS and Science Act will help to secure family-sustaining jobs that workers in his community have relied on for decades.

The expanding semiconductor industry offers similar opportunities to numerous other union workers.

Members of USW Local 105 at the Arconic plant in Davenport, Iowa, for example, make a tooling plate needed for chip manufacturing. And USW members entrusted with dismantling former nuclear energy sites in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky, are exploring the feasibility of recovering and supplying nickel, a material in chip manufacturing.

The CHIPS and Science Act also calls for investing billions to carry out advanced research and train workers for new semiconductor manufacturing jobs.

“It’s long overdue,” said Amro El-Jaroudi, associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, noting that the chip shortage forced him onto eBay to buy development boards—an essential learning device for engineering students—at twice the usual cost.

Investments in research will “keep us in a position of leadership” in a critical, evolving field, said El-Jaroudi, a member of the new USW unit now bargaining its first contract with university management, adding that he expects some of his union colleagues to seek CHIPS funding.

The design of the ever-more powerful chip is just one of the challenges these researchers face. “You not only have to figure out how to make it,” El-Jaroudi explained, “you also have to figure out how to manufacture it.”

As semiconductor usage exploded—even many popular children’s toys require chips—the number of American manufacturing workers in the industry actually declined amid concentration of manufacturing overseas.

But now, increases in domestic chip manufacturing will require corresponding growth in worker training programs like the one that prepared Thomas for his job at DuPont many years ago. Some manufacturers cited a “severe” and “critical” need for more industry-ready workers even before Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act.

“There are definitely a lot of specialized jobs that are going to become available in the U.S.,” said El-Jaroudi. “There are a lot of tools people have to learn how to use.”

Badlam and many other union members at the Canton plant have spent decades boosting America’s competitiveness, contributing some of the world’s purest glass for military uses, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the windows for NASA spacecraft.

Now, they’re eager to lend their expertise to a battle for global semiconductor supremacy that will create good-paying jobs at the same time.

“These people take it seriously,” Badlam said. “Bring it on.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

James Boutcher seized control of his future several years ago when foreign dumping cost him his entry-level position amid a series of job cuts at Century Aluminum in Hawesville, Kentucky.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

He enrolled in the federal government’s Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, went back to school to become an electrician and graduated with high-demand skills affording lasting protection in an evolving economy.

Now, on the heels of yet another wave of layoffs at Century Aluminum, Boutcher wants Republicans in Congress to join Democrats in quickly reestablishing TAA so hundreds of other workers have the same opportunity he did to start over.

Century Aluminum began idling the smelter in June, citing rising energy costs sparked by Russia’s war on Ukraine. TAA expired at the very same time amid the lack of Republican support, leaving about 500 members of USW Local 9423 at the Hawesville plant—and a growing number of other Americans harmed by globalization—to fend for themselves.

“It needs to be there,” Boutcher said of TAA, which Congress created decades ago to assist workers who lose their livelihoods because of the adverse effects of world trade. “If anyone has any doubts, I’m living proof.”

The importance of the program only continues to grow because of the war in Ukraine, foreign competitors’ efforts to subvert fair trade laws and other factors outside workers’ control. In the 2021 fiscal year alone, the program enrolled 107,000 additional workers, up 12 percent from 2020, with many of the new participants living in states like Texas, Nebraska and Wisconsin where Republicans so far refuse to support the program.

TAA covered tuition, books, mileage, supplies and other expenses for displaced workers who opted to go to college or trade school so they could upskill, as Boutcher did, or change career paths.

The program provided case management, career counseling and job search services. And it provided relocation assistance to workers who had to move for new employment and temporary wage support to eligible workers whose new jobs paid less than their previous ones.

“I was not out a penny,” said Boutcher, recalling how a counselor at Owensboro Community and Technical College regularly reviewed his grades to ensure his compliance with TAA requirements and keep him on the path to graduation.

The program bought tools he needed for hands-on learning and enabled him to take extra classes so that, on top of his associate degree focusing on industrial electricity, he graduated with knowledge of residential and commercial work.

After two years of study, he said, he “hit the ground running” and worked at a couple of companies before rejoining Century Aluminum in an electrician’s role a couple of years ago.

When Century idled the entire smelter and laid him off again last summer, he quickly found a new job using the skills TAA helped him attain.

“My bills are paid,” he said. “My kids aren’t hungry. We’ve not had to scale our lives down. I get to pick where I want to work now.”

TAA’s annual reports to Congress tell many similar stories of displaced workers successfully transitioning to new careers and more resilient futures, with the overwhelming majority of participants finding jobs soon after exiting the program.

It’s been so successful that unions and Democrats pushed not only for renewing the program but expanding and strengthening it this year.

Among other improvements, supporters advocated covering childcare expenses to ensure participants can both support their families and go to school. They proposed expanding participation to workers who lose their jobs because of the kinds of supply chain shortages experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And they pushed for extending financial assistance and other support to communities when trade-related plant closures and job losses gut local tax bases.

That’s the situation now facing the Hawesville area. Century Aluminum employed more people than live in Hawesville, and the smelter was the second-largest employer in Hancock County.

“I don’t know how you put a price on it,” Local 9423 President Andy Meserve said of TAA, recalling that the layoffs caught workers out of the blue. He noted that he and his co-workers celebrated a major milestone—completing work on a potline—just about a week before the company announced it was idling the plant.

Century Aluminum hopes to restart the facility—the company’s largest smelter and the biggest producer of high-purity primary aluminum on the continent—within a year.

But Meserve’s colleagues need incomes now. Without the comprehensive counseling and services provided by TAA, Meserve said, his former co-workers hunt for work as best they can.

They’re among thousands of workers across the country who lost the opportunity even to apply for TAA after June 30. But Republicans’ refusal to extend the program also devastated thousands of other workers who had already filed petitions but received no further consideration once the program expired.

“It’s frustrating,” said Jeff Ogg, one of about 50 members of USW Local 1017 who lost their jobs when GE Lighting shut its Logan, Ohio, plant several months ago because of foreign competition in the lighting components industry.

The Labor Department improperly denied the group’s petition for TAA even though workers met eligibility requirements. Then the program expired before the workers could file their appeal, casting them adrift.

Members of Congress failing to support TAA need to take a closer look at it, contends Boutcher, noting the program not only helps individual workers and keeps communities strong but protects the overall economy by retraining workers for in-demand jobs.

Boutcher, for example, helps to meet the nation’s soaring need for skilled tradespeople.

“It’s paid off,” he said of TAA.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Some workers began delaying doctor’s appointments and others started delving deeply into their pockets for care when Tecnocap illegally slashed health benefits at its Glen Dale, West Virginia, manufacturing plant last year.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

One worker even put thousands of dollars of chemotherapy charges on credit cards to save his wife’s life.

Lisa Wilds, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 152M, assured her colleagues that the company would be held accountable for the harm it inflicted on them. And just as she anticipated, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge issued a ruling in August that ordered Tecnocap to reinstate the old health plan and reimburse workers, with interest, for all expenses they incurred because of the company’s wrongdoing.

When employers like Tecnocap break the law, workers rely on the NLRB to enforce their rights. But a funding crisis imperils that mission at a time more and more Americans need the agency’s protection.

The NLRB hasn’t had an increase in its $274 million annual budget since the 2014 fiscal year, even though its workload skyrocketed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Union organizing drives, overseen by the NLRB, increased 53 percent over the past year as workers in manufacturing, e-commerce, healthcare and numerous other industries banded together for the higher wages, affordable healthcare, paid sick leave and other advantages that only collective action can deliver.

Employers doubled down on misconduct amid this wave of worker empowerment, with unfair labor practice charges—the complaints workers file when companies violate their rights—increasing 19 percent during the same 12-month period.

Fortunately, the NLRB stepped in to save the jobs of workers illegally fired for union activity, force companies to bargain in good faith and prohibit employers from spying on and demeaning workers.

“There is no way to put into words the value and importance of the NLRB,” explained Wilds, who stands to recoup about $7,000 herself after the agency ordered Tecnocap to reimburse the workers for medical bills.

This was just one of numerous times she and her co-workers turned to the NLRB for help over the years. In 2018, for example, Tecnocap illegally locked out workers for nine days, refusing to let them work, in an effort to break the union during contract negotiations.

The group stood strong, however, and the NLRB ruled the lockout illegal. The agency ordered Tecnocap to pay the workers lost wages, plus interest. And it also ordered the company to reimburse workers for any “search-for-work and interim employment expenses” they incurred during the lockout.

Victories like the ones at Tecnocap benefit workers across the country because they warn employers to toe the line. If one employer gets away with breaking the law, Wilds noted, others will attempt shenanigans of their own.

“It spreads like a disease,” noted Wilds, who worries that cost-cutting at the NLRB will result in slower investigations and give unscrupulous employers an advantage.

The NLRB warned of these very risks in a recent letter calling on Congress to address its “urgent funding needs.”

“The agency has already implemented a hiring freeze and, without additional funding, will likely be forced to pursue furloughs,” wrote NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran and General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, noting that slower investigations “delay relief for the injured party and may also increase the amount the charged party owes in monetary damages as interest, backpay, and other harms continue to accrue.”

The NLRB had a workforce of more than 1,700 in 2010. But that’s fallen to about 1,200 as vacancies go unfilled because of the budget crisis.

“While the agency has increased its productivity in recent years, staff cannot keep up with an increasing workload,” McFerran and Abruzzo added. “Further erosion of the agency’s staff and resources will continue to harm case processing to the significant detriment of both employers and employees.”

Workers need a robustly funded and staffed NLRB now more than ever as employers invent new ways to subvert union drives and deny workers a voice on the job.

In recent months, for example, workers filed dozens of unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB about employers who illegally subcontracted work to avoid unions or shut down stores, restaurants, factories and other workplaces when workers began exercising their labor rights.

Members of USW Local 4040 who work at HCL, a Google contractor, experienced a similar form of retaliation after organizing in 2019.

While in negotiations for a first contract, workers noticed that the company failed to fill vacancies on Pittsburgh-based work teams at the same time it kept adding similar positions at its location in Poland. “It started looking pretty fishy to us,” recalled Local 4040 President Stefan Sidelnick.

The union filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, which confirmed that HCL intended to erode the bargaining unit rather than negotiate with it. The NLRB demanded that the company restore the work shifted overseas.

“We feel it kind of lit a fire under the company’s feet,” Sidelnick said of the NLRB’s involvement, noting union members and HCL ultimately reached a contract that protects staffing levels at the Pittsburgh location.

Only a robustly funded and staffed NLRB can continue to protect workers’ livelihoods as it did for union members at Tecnocap and HCL. Wilds said her co-workers have peace of mind just knowing the agency is standing watch for them.

“Are you going to go into battle with a tank or are you going into battle with a stick? That’s the difference,” Wilds said of the NLRB’s power to level the playing field for workers.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Michael McMullen spent years agonizing over the failing pension plan that put his golden years at risk.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

He wrote numerous postcards and made countless phone calls urging Congress to step in and safeguard his future. But not until he and fellow Georgians elected Raphael Warnock to the Senate in 2021 did the Democrats have the final vote needed to pass legislation stabilizing that plan and other multiemployer pension funds on the brink of collapse.

Warnock saved McMullen’s retirement and that of 1.3 million other Americans—then cast scores of other votes that helped to shift the nation’s trajectory from peril to progress. Now, reelecting Warnock in Georgia’s December 6 runoff is crucial to continuing the country’s hard-fought path forward.

“He’s for the working class, for the middle class,” summed up McMullen, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1703, which represents workers at the Georgia-Pacific paper mill in Cedar Springs, Georgia, who are already benefiting from the pension-saving provisions of the American Rescue Plan that Warnock pushed over the goal line in March 2021.

McMullen and other union members had grown increasingly alarmed over the years about their paper industry pension plan, one of about 130 multiemployer retirement funds hurtling toward insolvency because of Wall Street recklessness, corporate bankruptcies, and other factors outside workers’ control.

Some of his coworkers already delayed retirement to build up savings in case the fund went broke, while others worried about meager retirements in which they’d have to choose between buying food or prescriptions.

“They were really worried about it,” McMullen said, adding that the plan’s impending failure also portended the demise of stores and restaurants relying on retirees for business. “It would have been like a mill closing.”

Unions and their Democratic allies repeatedly attempted to save the plans, but the pro-corporate Republicans in control of the Senate blocked all efforts to safeguard the futures that many workers and retirees had spent decades building.

Warnock’s election in 2021—he won a seat previously held by a Republican—helped to give Democrats the razor-thin Senate majority needed to finally pass the pension legislation without a single Republican’s support.

“It took every Democratic vote. If they didn’t have that one vote, they couldn’t have passed it,” McMullen said of Warnock, recalling how the anxiety that he and others harbored about their pensions vanished in an instant.

Working with President Joe Biden and the Democrat-led House, the new Senate majority went on to pass other legislation pivotal to defeating COVID-19 and surmounting the economic crisis wreaked by the previous administration.

Warnock, a pastor with working-class roots, delivered crucial support for the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that’s modernizing the nation, creating middle-class jobs, and revitalizing American manufacturing.

In October, for example, Solvay Specialty Polymers announced that IIJA support will enable it to build an electric vehicle battery parts plant in Augusta, Georgia, creating dozens of manufacturing jobs and expanding the state’s foothold in the clean economy.

Warnock passionately defended voting rights amid Republicans’ efforts to disenfranchise millions of working-class voters across the country, warning that people were being “squeezed out of their democracy.”

He led the Senate’s passage of the CHIPS and Science Act to build out critical supply chains and enhance national security.

And he not only sponsored but also pushed through legislation that imposes a $35-a-month cap on insulin costs for Medicare recipients and limits seniors’ overall out-of-pocket drug costs to $2,000 a year.

“I know seniors who pay $400 to $500 a month for insulin. To have that capped at $35 is a lifesaver,” noted Darryl Ford, president of USW Local 254, which represents hundreds of American Red Cross workers in Georgia and other states.

Ford, who’s campaigned for Warnock and spoken to him during conference calls arranged by the Georgia AFL-CIO, respects the senator’s deep connection with everyday Georgians and lifelong commitment to serving others. “‘I’m not in love with politics. I’m in love with change,’” Ford said, repeating from memory one of Warnock’s favorite expressions.

“He’s authentic. When I see him, I can see my dad. I can see myself. He motivates you to want to fight, to want to make things right,” Ford said, noting Warnock’s continued support for legislation making it easier for workers to form unions and seize control of their own destinies.

Voters elected Warnock in 2021 to serve out a predecessor’s unexpired term. Since then, he’s earned a full term of his own, Ford said, noting that Warnock—a freshman legislator with no prior government experience—amassed a remarkable record of accomplishments in under two years and won praise for reaching across the aisle to move critical legislation forward.

“He’s there to work,” Ford added. “He’s not there to make the backdoor deals. I wish we could have more senators like that.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Alyssa Stout and her 800 coworkers banded together to keep Oroville Hospital open throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, working around the clock to save countless lives.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

But these union members didn’t stop there. They brought that same unwavering solidarity to the bargaining table earlier in 2022 and won a new contract with safety enhancements and other provisions designed to leave the workforce, the hospital, and their Northern California community stronger than before.

Stout and her colleagues are among thousands of union healthcare workers nationwide who are harnessing the collective power they forged during the pandemic to dramatically improve America’s system of care.

“I feel we have more leverage now than we ever did before, just because people realize we’re needed,” said Stout, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9600 and an X-ray technologist at Oroville, recalling how union workers put their lives on the line and pulled their communities through the crisis.

“People realize, in general, now how important the health care community is,” she continued, noting local residents signed petitions, reposted the union’s social media messages, and took other actions to support the workers’ recent contract negotiations. “It all kind of trickles down. People want to see us being treated well so they’re treated well. We were fighting for everyone.”

Hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities wrestled with turnover long before the pandemic, partly because they tried to save money on the backs of workers in crucial but long-underappreciated departments such as environmental services and dietary. But nurses, certified nursing assistants, and other caregivers couldn’t have saved COVID-19 victims without the contributions of colleagues who sanitized rooms and prepared nutritious meals.

So workers at Oroville stood together for a contract providing significant raises to all union members, underscoring the collective effort essential to operating the hospital and ensuring patients continued access to an experienced, stable workforce committed to delivering ever better care across every department.

The contract also establishes a labor-management safety committee that gives a real voice to the front-line workers who best know how to address the hazards they and their patients face every day. Union members provided management with photos documenting cluttered hallways and blocked fire exits, driving home the need for collective vigilance and worker input in a part of the country where a wildfire destroyed another hospital just a few years ago.

“Our safety has to be a priority. Otherwise, we can’t be there for the patients we care about,” observed Stout, noting the challenges of the pandemic fostered greater cohesion and tenacity that union members brought to bear at the bargaining table.

Across the country, other union contracts are yielding similar improvements for workers, patients, and their communities.

More than 2,700 nurses and other workers at UMass Memorial Health Care in Massachusetts won significant raises and other enhancements that not only recognize the sacrifices they made throughout the pandemic but will also help the system’s hospitals recruit and retain the workforce patients need.

Nurses at three Steward Health Care hospitals in Florida achieved protections from unsafe scheduling and the creation of an infectious disease task force in their new agreements, while workers at Kaleida Health in New York successfully fought for wages increases, a health and safety committee and the health system’s commitment to create 500 new positions to address unsafe staffing issues.

And nearly 80 members of USW Local 7798-1 attained management’s commitment to address safe staffing concerns, among other gains, in a new agreement they ratified on November 14 with Copper Country Mental Health in Michigan.

“I do see a new trend,” said Local 7798-1 President Scott Skotarczyk, referring to the power that pandemic-tested healthcare workers are bringing to the bargaining table. “Look at what we did in this agreement. We got a pay increase. We got—for our more senior staff—an increase in vacation time. We didn’t give anything up.”

The contract also spells out a procedure for developing timely, effective responses when clients act out, creating safer environments for both workers and residents in the agency’s group homes.

“This is a stressful job,” Skotarczyk said, noting the contract improvements will help to facilitate the stable, experienced workforce needed to help clients build more independent lives.

“The more time you spend in this field, the more effective you are,” he said. “I’ve learned over the years what works best.”

Workers at union-represented hospitals have better patient outcomes, more inspections for workplace hazards, and better access to personal protective equipment (PPE), among many other advantages, than their counterparts at other facilities. Now, union members’ successful advocacy for themselves and their patients is fueling a wave of union drives across the healthcare industry.

More than 800 interns, residents, and other doctors at the University of Illinois Chicago formed a union in 2021, for example, citing the need to band together and fight for the long-overdue resources essential to patient care. Overall, according to new research from the AFL-CIO, 71 percent of healthcare workers would vote to unionize their workplaces.

“Don’t give up. Don’t back down,” Stout advises healthcare workers who want to leverage union power at their workplaces.

“We all made it, and we all helped each other,” she said of her coworkers at Oroville over the past few years. “We’re so much stronger together.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Lamar Wilkerson and his co-workers at U.S. Steel’s Fairfield Tubular Operations help to lead the battle for America’s energy security, producing the top-quality pipe that keeps oil, natural gas, and other products flowing through vast distribution networks.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

But as workers at the Alabama plant labor to build out this critical infrastructure, they face an insidious threat. Foreign countries quietly dump cheap tubular goods in U.S. markets, putting their jobs and the nation’s safety at risk.

Fortunately, workers can count on pro-union officials like U.S. Reps. Frank Mrvan of Indiana and Tim Ryan of Ohio to stand with them in the fight for fair trade.

Just last week, the United Steelworkers (USW) and congressional allies won key protections for the Fairfield workers—and their counterparts at other pipe manufacturers across the country—with a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling triggering duties on unfairly traded tubular goods from Argentina, Mexico, Russia, and South Korea.

“We want to keep everything American made,” explained Wilkerson, president of USW Local 1013, which represents hundreds of workers at Fairfield. “That’s what built this country. That’s what needs to continue to build this country.”

The ITC determined—based on evidence provided by the USW and others—that American workers have been “materially injured” by the unfair imports of these oil country tubular goods (OCTG). Russia and South Korea illegally subsidized the production of these items and acted, along with the other two countries, to dump these products in the United States at artificially low prices and steal market share from U.S. pipe manufacturers.

“As the Co-Chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus, I am committed to continuing to do everything possible to ensure that bad actors and countries that cheat know that American trade laws will be fully enforced,” Mrvan said in arguing for the duties during a hearing before the ITC in September. “We must continue to work to ensure that all American workers and the domestic pipe and tube industry are able to compete on a level playing field.”

The new duties on imports will not only rebalance the scales, giving Wilkerson and his colleagues a fair shot at competing with foreign suppliers, but also facilitate the continued safe and reliable development of domestic energy supplies.

Union members at Fairfield and other plants take great pride in making products “of the best quality,” Wilkerson said, noting workers manufacture a “line pipe” for carrying the oil or gas as well as a casing that provides additional security for distribution networks.

Some of these pipelines link production fields to refineries and chemical and petrochemical plants, while others deliver energy to customers. Because these lines traverse waterways, residential neighborhoods, and other sensitive areas, the nation has strong incentive to rely on only the strongest, most dependable components.

And foreign-produced pipe, Wilkerson noted, is “cheaply made. It may be no good when it goes in the ground.”

The ITC’s decision on OCTG will ripple through the economy, helping to protect not only the thousands of union members manufacturing pipe across the country but thousands more workers at the steel plants supplying pipe-making facilities.

“Northwest Indiana is home to an incredible steel and manufacturing base, and the dedicated workforce and members of the United Steelworkers provide the material and hot-rolled steel that is used to make OCTG products,” Mrvan reminded the ITC in September.

Unions and pro-worker officials waged similar battles over the years to safeguard family-sustaining jobs in America’s aluminum, magnesium, paper, tire, and many other industries. They’ve joined forces to fight foreign dumping of hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and flat-rolled steel along with steel wheels and rebar.

And they teamed up to fight previous dumping of tubular goods in U.S. markets.

“When I return to my district later this month, I want to assure my constituents that we have taken appropriate steps to remedy this pervasive problem,” Ryan, now running for U.S. Senate, told the ITC during a hearing in 2009 as China flooded America with cheaply made pipe. The ITC ultimately ruled that the imports damaged American industry, triggering duties against the cheaters.

Again, in 2014, Ryan stepped up to help workers successfully beat back an influx of OCTG from various countries.

“You’ve got to be really vigilant about it. You’ve got to pay attention all the time,” observed Charles Perko, president of USW Local 3267, noting trade offenders not only continually attempt to infiltrate U.S. markets but try to circumvent duties the federal government imposes on unfairly traded products.

While workers and unions contribute unique expertise to trade cases, elected officials can use the bully pulpit to draw attention to cheating and the power of their offices to move complaints through enforcement agencies, observed Perko, whose local represents workers at Evraz’s OCTG mill in Pueblo, Colo.

“They’re going to listen to someone who has ‘senator’ or ‘member of Congress’ after their name,” he added, pointing out that some officials—including Ryan, Mrvan, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Reps. Terri Sewell of Alabama and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut—have national reputations for standing watch with workers on trade.

Wilkerson said workers already feel the impact of efforts to safeguard America’s OCTG industry. In the months since the USW and its congressional allies launched a united front against cheaters, the company created new jobs at Fairfield and increased overtime for union members.

“Business is really good right now,” Wilkerson said.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Chris Frydenger and his coworkers at the Mueller Co. in Decatur, Illinois, began ramping up production of valves, couplings, and other products used in water and gas systems soon after President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2021.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

But the life-changing impact of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure program really struck Frydenger, grievance chair for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-838, when management reached out to the union with an unprecedented proposal.

The company asked to reopen the local’s contract and negotiate an additional pay increase so it could hire and retain enough workers to meet the dramatic spike in orders. “Everybody in the union got a raise,” Frydenger recalled.

Historic improvements to America’s roads, bridges, airports, public utilities, and communications networks have generated surging demand for aluminum and steel as well as raw materials like nickel and ore and the pipes, batteries, valves, and other components needed for thousands of infrastructure projects.

That demand, in turn, continues to create family-sustaining jobs, put more money in workers’ pockets, and lift the middle class, just as labor unions and their Democratic allies predicted when they pushed the legislation through Congress and onto Biden’s desk.

“This story needs to be told, for sure. It at least doubled our business in a short period of time,” said Frydenger, noting the local’s 408 members not only received middle-of-the-contract pay increases but also continue to avail themselves of all the overtime they want.

Workers use that extra money to buy cars and appliances, remodel their houses, and support local businesses, among many other purposes, helping to extend the IIJA’s reach to virtually every segment of the local economy.

“It’s had such an impact that in our new hire orientations, our general manager talks about it,” Frydenger said of the IIJA. “That’s how big an impact it’s had on sales. He gives all the credit to the infrastructure bill.”

The billions allocated for drinking water, sewer, and stormwater upgrades will enable utilities across the nation to extend distribution systems, replace aging pipes, curtail runoff, and address lead and other contaminants. And investments in natural gas infrastructure—as well as solar, wind, and hydrogen power—will help the country build a more secure, reliable energy base.

Domestic procurement requirements in the infrastructure law will ensure these projects rely on products such as those made at the Decatur plant. What makes Frydenger happier still is knowing that his union brothers and sisters up and down the supply chain also have brighter futures because of the infrastructure push.

An increasing number of orders prompted Mueller Co. to expand its purchases of brass, a raw material in the company’s production process. Helping to fill that need are about 225 members of USW Local 7248 at Wieland Chase, a brass manufacturing plant in Montpelier, Ohio, and about 50 members of USW Local 9777 at H. Kramer & Co., a brass and bronze ingot foundry in Chicago.

“The orders have just piled up because of the rebuilding and construction,” said Local 9777 President Steve Kramer, noting that the business boom spurred by the infrastructure program helped his members win good raises and other gains in a recently completed contract with the foundry. “When orders are up and they’re under the gun, we’ve got a little more leverage.”

“They’re growing. They just hired more people,” Kramer said of the foundry’s increased business with Mueller Co., among other customers. He added that the IIJA also has boosted production and employment at many of the 40 or so other USW-represented companies covered by his amalgamated local.

The Decatur plant sells products directly to customers. But it also ships some of what Frydenger and his coworkers make to other Mueller facilities, where even more USW members are experiencing the benefits of the infrastructure program.

“It just flooded our orders,” said Chad Dickerson, president of Local 00065B, which represents about 450 union members who manufacture Mueller fire hydrants in Albertville, Alabama, known as the “fire hydrant capital of the world.”

“It’s definitely created some jobs for us,” said Dickerson, adding, “We’re going to start staffing a weekend crew.”

The increase in orders “probably added 50 jobs we never would have had,” and Dickerson estimated the need to create up to 100 more jobs in coming months.

Those hydrants go to places like Groton, Connecticut, where members of USW Local 9411-00 provide water and sewer service to thousands of customers.

“The Mueller hydrant is our standard throughout the system,” explained Kevin Ziolkovsky, Local 9411-00 unit president, whose members at Groton Utilities serve the city of Groton and a handful of neighboring communities.

Crews installed some of the hydrants in a housing plan during a recent maintenance program, he said, calling them “easy to work on” and “tough as steel.” He added that even after they’re struck by vehicles, an occasional occurrence, USW members need only “change a few parts and put them back in service.”

Ziolkovsky and his coworkers look forward to using more of those hydrants and other Mueller products in infrastructure program projects that would boost customers’ safety and quality of life.

“Any time you upgrade the system, you reduce the possibility of water main breaks or blockages,” Ziolkovsky observed. “Your water quality increases. Your water pressure is better.”

Workers at Mueller have been making these top-of-the-line products for about 150 years. With the infrastructure program, Frydenger noted, they’ll continue making them—and newer versions—for decades to come.

“We’re innovating more every day,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much it fills my heart to be part of this.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Navigating washed-out roads and piles of debris, Mayra Rivera quickly began checking on coworkers and neighbors after Hurricane Fiona battered Puerto Rico in September.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Rivera, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8198, realized she’d spend months if not years helping the island navigate a daunting cleanup and recovery process. But her immediate goal was ensuring community members had the basics:

Safe food. Clean drinking water. And, just as important, a shoulder for survivors to lean on as they began picking up the pieces of their shattered lives.

While labor unions continue their traditional fights for decent wages, affordable health care, and safe working conditions, they’re also stepping up to help workers manage stress and the threats to mental health that they encounter on and off the job.

Rivera, whose local represents municipal workers in the southern coastal city of Ponce, collaborated with the USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center for Health, Safety and Environmental Education in recent years to deliver disaster and mental resilience training to island communities pummeled by a string of hurricanes and earthquakes.

The training includes techniques for helping families prepare physically and psychologically for disasters, such as assembling “go bags” to sustain them in case of extended evacuations. The program, adapted from resources and materials developed by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program, also helps to boost residents’ safety and confidence by demonstrating how to guard against contaminants, downed power lines, and other hazards that hurricanes leave in their wake.

And the training showcases strategies—like providing social support, as Rivera offered in Fiona’s aftermath—to help survivors maintain the resilience essential to persevering after tragedy strikes. Rivera knows that the same solidarity that lifts up workers on the job also can help disaster survivors get through their darkest days.

“They start talking and talking and talking. They need to talk. People need to be heard,” said Rivera, recalling how eagerly residents related their experiences to her after Fiona knocked out power to the entire island, destroyed infrastructure, and flattened entire communities.

Providing this kind of outlet is especially critical, she noted, to maintain hope among people who were still trying to bounce back from five-year-old Hurricane Maria when Fiona walloped them again.

Tarps still covered thousands of homes that lost their roofs during Maria. Fiona destroyed some of the same infrastructure all over again. The wave of disasters created a looming mental health crisis that Rivera says her union is well suited to help address.

“We are a family,” said Rivera, who lost her own farm during Maria and can relate on a personal level with coworkers, neighbors, and others impacted by disaster. “It’s easier for them to open up to us.”

Studies document the therapeutic power of social connections.

Researchers from Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, tracked about 2,200 Hurricane Sandy survivors between the ages of 54 and 80 over a period of years. They found lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among those who experienced higher levels of social cohesion after the storm, which struck Puerto Rico and parts of the United States, along with several other countries, in 2012.

Similarly, a Harvard study found that strong social connections mattered more than material resources, such as food and shelter, in helping elderly survivors cope with the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Social interaction even helped to stave off the cognitive decline many survivors experienced after the tragedy.

Disasters exacerbate threats to mental health and give unions special opportunities to help workers and communities endure. But unions also help members combat corrosive, everyday stressors that chip away at their families’ well-being.

Unions bargain strong contracts, for example, with paid sick days, bereavement leave, assistance programs, and other resources to help workers juggle job and family pressures—then zealously enforce those contracts to ensure members actually derive the intended benefits.

USW Local 8599’s contract with the Fontana (California) Unified School District provides leave that workers may use to spend time with dying relatives. When a supervisor tried to block one worker from using the leave, Local President Dawn Dooley immediately intervened with school officials, securing the union member both the time off and peace of mind.

Dooley continually reminds members that they’re never up against management alone. “You have the right to representation,” she says, “even if the conflict occurs at a potluck dinner.”

As more and more Americans report problems with stress, unions seek new ways to leverage the power of solidarity and equip workers in the fight for mental health.

When the communications company TELUS began harassing workers for taking restroom breaks, USW Local 1944 used the grievance process to safeguard members’ rights and safety. But the local, which represents thousands of workers at company call centers across Canada, also launched a broader campaign to protect members from the burnout they risked because of their stressful jobs.

Among other steps, the local’s Women of Steel committee published a series of user-friendly guides on how to address fatigue, anxiety, and depression. The guides explain that burnout is “the consequence of a high-performance culture,” not a personal failure, and emphasize the importance of sharing frustrations with coworkers and union leaders.

“We lift them up and give them a safe space so they can have a conversation,” Local President Donna Hokiro explained. “People feel empowered.”

“We fight for you,” she added of the union, “but we also teach you how to fight for yourself.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Al Polk will bid his wife goodbye on October 11 and set out for New Hampshire with boots, gloves, heavy coat, windshield scraper, and shovel in the trunk of his Chevy Impala.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

As the weather grows colder over the next few weeks, the fight for America’s future will also reach a turning point. And there’s no way the 79-year-old will let brutal temperatures, ice, or snowstorms impede his efforts to turn out Granite State voters for the crucial November 8 election.

Polk, a Massachusetts resident and member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), is among thousands of union activists across the country committed to knocking on doors, handing out leaflets, and organizing rallies to support the pro-worker candidates needed to continue moving America forward the next two years.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe in it,” declared Polk, who served as president of his United Steelworkers (USW) local at Cleveland Twist Drill in Mansfield, Massachusetts, for 20 years and then worked on the union staff before retiring in 2015.

Polk has volunteered for election work in New Hampshire for decades.

He’s lived in hotels for weeks at a stretch, just as he intends to do again this year. He’s endured drenching rain as well as early winter snowstorms forcing him to shovel out his car before long days of door-knocking.

He’s talked with thousands of fellow union members, securing untold votes with his respectful doorstep advocacy, and handed out thousands of flyers at USW-represented workplaces like the Manchester Water Works, New Hampshire Ball Bearings in Laconia, and 3M in Tilton.

And while every election has its pivotal issues—the Democrats’ tireless work on invigorating the economy and growing the middle class proved decisive factors in 2020, for example—Polk cannot remember another time when voters in New Hampshire and throughout the country faced so stark a choice as they do this year.

“Keep the forward movement or stand still,” explained Polk, who expects to log many miles traveling around the state to highlight the string of accomplishments that pro-worker officials and their union allies racked up since President Joe Biden took office just 20 months ago.

That list of accomplishments includes the American Rescue Plan, which provided the child care assistance and other support that families needed to survive the COVID-19 pandemic while also saving the retirements of 1.3 million Americans enrolled in faltering multiemployer pension plans.

It includes the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, already contributing to record job growth by rebuilding roads, bridges, waterways, energy systems, and communications networks with union labor and products.

And it includes the CHIPS and Science Act, intended to spur production of crucial supply chains, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which imposes a $35 cap on insulin costs for Medicare recipients, fuels development of the clean economy, and forces the wealthiest Americans to begin paying their fair share in taxes.

These bills set the stage for a manufacturing renaissance after years of industrial decline, Polk said, adding he often “felt like a mortician” over the years while assisting families devastated by mill and plant closures.

Electing more pro-worker officials would pave the way for still more prosperity. Passage of the Protecting the right to Organize (PRO) Act, for example, would eliminate barriers to union organizing and help more Americans secure family-sustaining wages, safe working conditions, and a voice on the job.

As he knocks on doors, Polk will emphasize the support that Democratic officials like New Hampshire’s Sen. Maggie Hassan and U.S. Reps. Chris Pappas and Annie Kuster, all seeking reelection this year, provided for worker-friendly bills.

But he’ll also point out the important role that more than a dozen Republicans in the New Hampshire legislature played in defeating anti-worker legislation in the state last year. These Republicans, several of them union members themselves, joined forces with Democrats to kill a falsely named right-to-work bill that would have undermined unions and weakened workers’ voices.

“It’s very simple,” Polk said of the USW’s approach to candidates. “If they support our issues, we support them. If they don’t support our issues, we don’t support them.”

“It’s bipartisan,” agreed John Gros, president of USW Local 13-447 in Westwego, Louisiana, citing his members’ close ties with city Councilman Johnny Nobles, a member of the GOP. “We endorse Republicans, just like we endorse Democrats. They just have to support working men and women.”

If union-endorsed officials of either party fail to honor their promises to working people, he said, he’ll work to defeat them in the next election.

Getting out the vote for pro-worker candidates is essential in countering the billions that corporations spend to influence elections, observed Gros, noting that big business courts officials who will let them cut corners on safety, violate labor rights, and suppress workers’ voices.

During the last administration, pro-corporate appointees at the National Labor Relations Board turned the agency against the very workers it was created to serve. But Biden, elected largely with the support of USW members and other union workers, quickly put the agency back on course.

“We can’t throw a lot of money at folks because we don’t have a lot of money,” said Gros, who also serves as vice president of the Louisiana AFL-CIO and the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO. “We have votes. We have boots on the ground.”

“That’s why it’s so important that we get out there,” he said of union voters. “Every vote does make a difference.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

When a group of custodians in York County, South Carolina, learned their bosses planned to sell them out to save a few pennies, they knew exactly who to turn to for help—a fellow worker who’d walked in the very same shoes.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

County Councilman William “Bump” Roddey, a longtime member of the United Steelworkers (USW) and a former custodian himself, assured the county workers that he had their backs. Roddey ultimately helped quash the scheme to contract out the county’s janitorial services, a victory both for the custodians and the taxpayers relying on their quality work.

Electing more union members like Roddey to councils and mayoral posts will help to combat right-wing attacks on workers and hold local government accountable to the ordinary people it’s intended to serve.

“We speak for the American worker,” Roddey, a member of USW Local 1924 who works at New-Indy Containerboard, said of union members. “We speak for the middle class. The agenda is not about us if we are not at the table.”

If the county had privatized cleaning services, any small budgetary savings would have paled next to the pain inflicted on the custodians, Roddey said, noting officials out of touch with working people “don’t too quickly grasp these scenarios.”

“The perspective of the people who sign the front of the paycheck is different from the perspective of the people who sign the back of the paycheck,” said Roddey, whose colleagues on the council include three business owners. “I bring that back-of-the-paycheck perspective to everything I do.”

Attacks on working people aren’t unique to South Carolina.

After the school board in Putnam, Connecticut, contracted out custodial services, for example, workers lost access to their pension system even though they’d been promised no change in benefits.

In recent months, USW-represented school bus drivers in Bay City, Michigan, beat back efforts to contract out their work, while union members in Los Angeles County, California, won their own fight against privatization.

Electing more union members would ensure that local officials instead invest their energies in productive ways, such as building robust, worker-centered economies.

Some forward-thinking local officials have used their authority to pass worker protection laws, to establish agencies for enforcing those safeguards, and to create workers councils to take testimony on job-related issues, noted the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, in a recent report. At Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards, for example, a full-time equivalent staff of 34 enforces 18 worker-centered ordinances, including those requiring paid sick time, employment opportunity, and protections for gig workers.

Local officials have the power to hold corporations accountable when they accept public subsidies with promises of creating dignified, family-sustaining jobs. It’s also the prerogative of mayors and councils to provide resources, like affordable housing, that help level the playing field for struggling workers.

And the advocacy of local officials can buoy workers in difficult times. Roddey and other leaders stepped up to support workers at Giti Tire in Chester County, South Carolina, during a USW organizing drive sparked by low pay, unsafe working conditions, and discrimination.

“I certainly recognize the challenges that workers are facing every day at Giti,” said Roddey, part of a community coalition that signed a letter to corporate management in November 2021 demanding an end to its abusive practices.

Having union members in charge at city hall not only protects jobs but may even help to ensure the survival of the community itself.

Clairton, Pennsylvania, Mayor Richard Lattanzi points out that no one can adequately represent his city without a deep appreciation for the Clairton Coke Works and the Steelworkers who have anchored the community for decades.

And while meeting the daily needs of his constituents, many of them USW members and other union workers, Lattanzi also must defend the coke works against extremists eager to shut it down. “That’s one-third of our tax base, and that’s our identity,” said Lattanzi, a longtime USW member who worked at the Irvin Works in the nearby community of West Mifflin.

Some union members run for local office because their concern for coworkers spills over into the communities they call home.

“Our job as a union and as union leaders is to take care of people, especially working people, and that’s what our communities are made up of,” observed Steve Kramer, president of USW Local 9777 and a member of the Dyer, Indiana, Town Council, calling his step into government service “a natural and easy progression.”

Union membership equips workers with the skills they need for public office. Union members understand the power of solidarity and diversity. They’re accustomed to having a voice and standing up for what’s right.

“What better person to run for elected office than a union member? We’re problem-solvers,” said Kramer, who’s helped to ensure that Dyer buys American-made products, that town-funded projects support good jobs, and that government resources are equitably distributed across the community.

“I wish more union members would step up and do it. I know we have talent out there,” he continued, noting that in addition to elected positions, communities need volunteers to serve on water, library, and many other boards.

An influx of union members into councils and other local posts would also help pave the way to more worker representation at other levels of government. As these local officials move up to higher office, Roddey noted, state legislatures and Congress will become more responsive to the will of the people.

“There’s a path to changing how these bodies operate, and the first step is getting involved locally,” he said.

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Carl Asher clung to a wooden post on his porch for three hours—yelling for help in the darkness, water lapping at his neck—before risking it all.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

He threw himself into the torrent below and, guided by a neighbor’s spotlight, swam several hundred feet against a punishing current to high ground. Asher and his wife, Tonya, a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) who was at work at the time, lost their home, five vehicles, a camper, and their 12-year-old cat, Ebony, in historic flooding that killed 39 and obliterated parts of Eastern Kentucky in July.

Climate change rendered these communities and countless others across the country vulnerable to increasingly frequent and powerful storms.

The nation long responded to these calamities with patchwork repairs that failed to provide lasting improvements or real protection. But now, America’s $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is delivering the stronger, more resilient roads, broadband networks, and water systems that comprehensively guard against not only floods but also wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disasters.

The IIJA, which President Joe Biden signed in November 2021, earmarks billions for flood prevention and mitigation projects alone. That includes shoring up dilapidated dams, strengthening coastal defenses, overhauling the stormwater systems needed to manage heavy rains, relocating drinking water lines out of flood zones, and upgrading sewer systems to prevent the overflows that occur during major storms.

And the IIJA includes funds for dredging long-neglected waterways, while also allocating hundreds of millions of dollars more each year to a program that elevates homes in at-risk areas so that others will be spared what the Ashers and other Kentuckians endured this summer.

The couple, longtime residents of the small community called Lost Creek, had completed a screened-in porch and a concrete driveway and added to a memory garden dedicated to their late son, Matthew, in the months before the flood.

The water rose so rapidly that night that Carl Asher dropped a box of valuables he had gathered and shimmied up the porch for safety. The flood eventually triggered a fire, which caused the second floor to collapse into the first and ended any hope of saving their home of 16 years.

“If I was there, I would not have survived. I cannot swim. I would not have made it,” said Tonya Asher, a member of USW Local 14637 who works at the Appalachian Regional Healthcare medical center in nearby Hazard, Kentucky, noting the current her husband battled was so strong it “literally ripped his clothes off of him. By the time he reached the neighbors, he was just shaking.”

In a 2019 report, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave poor grades to Kentucky’s infrastructure. The flooding “annihilated” much of what remained in 13 counties, wiping out roads and bridges and knocking out power, cell phone, and internet service at a time residents needed them most.

“You’d go to an address, and there was nothing there,” said Gypsy Cantrell, president of USW Local 14581 in Elkhorn City, Kentucky, recalling how the city of Hazard looked on a day she delivered supplies to fellow union members who lost all they had. “It was in such a state you couldn’t tell what street you were on.”

“So much contributed to this,” said Cantrell, who also started a Facebook page and helped to raise thousands of dollars for disaster victims. “The creeks and the small rivers, they’ve never been dredged. They are doing some now as they clean up the flood debris.”

Many Local 14581 members are highly skilled construction workers who have been volunteering their time to help USW brothers and sisters devastated by the flooding. They’ve also remained on the job, aiding government agencies in clearing debris, making temporary stream crossings, and reopening communities.

In the coming months, Cantrell expects those workers will return to the larger task of building the new, tougher roads, bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure upgrades set in motion by the IIJA. Those projects will leave Lost Creek and similar communities stronger than before.

“That’s the objective here,” Biden said while inspecting the damage in Lost Creek in August.

“It’s not just to get back to where we were. It’s to get back to better than where we were, and we have the wherewithal to do it now,” Biden added, noting improvements to communication networks and internet service also will be part of rebuilding efforts through the IIJA.

If a community installs a new water line, he pointed out, “there’s no reason why they can’t at the same time be digging a line that puts in a whole new modern line for internet connections.”

The USW helped to push the IIJA through Congress because it will sustain millions of good-paying union jobs and take the expansive, holistic steps needed to move the nation forward. The infrastructure program will touch almost every aspect of American life.

Just as essential as new roads and bridges, for example, are the IIJA’s historic investments in rail, airports, and inland navigation to ensure the flow of commerce and enhance the nation’s global competitiveness.

The billions targeted for wind, solar, and hydrogen energy will grow and diversify America’s power supplies, enhancing national security. And new schools will provide the modern facilities all students need to lead productive lives.

Cantrell said Eastern Kentucky’s rugged topography long hindered infrastructure development there. But now, the IIJA provides the resources—and commitment—essential to giving the people in her region a brighter future.

“It will help us get ahead,” she said. “But we have to catch up first.”

Author Bio: Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).