America’s rundown infrastructure is heading for a makeover following the passage in the Senate of the sweeping historic legislation in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Aug. 9. Together with the budget bill under consideration in the House of Representatives, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created as the Biden Build Back Better agenda comes to fruition.

President Biden called out the necessity of IBEW linemen following the Category 4 hurricane that smashed into NewOrleans and continued to menace the country’s interior before inundating New York and New Jersey with massive flooding.

A powerful voice for workers went silent Aug. 5 with the death of Richard Trumka, who rose from humble roots in the Pennsylvania coal mines to lead the AFL-CIO.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh traveled to Wisconsin on May 25 to meet with unions and business leaders and boost the American Jobs Plan. The subject of bipartisan negotiations on Capitol Hill, the AJP is a proposed investment in the country’s infrastructure and transportation system that will put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work, many in the IBEW’s core sectors. Walsh was joined by Rep. Ron Kind.

President Biden’s 2022 spending plan makes the case that a promising future means aggressive action to combat climate change while rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and addressing longstanding economic inequalities.

Policy at the Department of Labor is looking a lot different than under the Trump administration, or even under Obama.

The DOL’s anti-corruption unit, the Office of Labor-Management Standards, is going back to defending unions. Under the agency’s mandate of transparency and accountability, disclosure forms collected by the OLMS require detailed information about unions’ membership and finances.

The new OLMS director, Jeffrey Freund, plans a public campaign to tout unions’ compliance with the agency’s transparency rules.