Build Back Better

Witnessing History: 

With the stroke of the pen, alongside more than 10 IBEW members and a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the White House on Nov. 15, President Biden made official one of the biggest infrastructure investments in U.S. history.

President Biden appeared at the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton on October 20 to promote his domestic agenda and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be created to rebuild the nation’s degraded infrastructure.

Continuing a trend of filling labor-related posts with experienced pro-worker nominees, President Biden has selected Susan Tsui Grundmann and Kurt Rumsfeld for seats on the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

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.

It was almost déjà vu when Denver Local 68 journeyman wireman Julian Aguilar met President Biden at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on September 14 outside Denver.

Historic and transformational change for America’s infrastructure and jobs is the order of the day on Capitol Hill as negotiators seek to construct legislation containing President Biden’s bold plan for America.

At issue are plans to build the charging infrastructure necessary for widescale adoption of electric vehicles, buses, trains and trucks and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in roads, transit, the electrical grid, passenger and freight rail, broadband and water infrastructure.

President Biden signed an executive order targeting 2030 as the year that half of all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 will be electric.

He was joined by auto company executives in the August 5 White House announcement, when he emphasized the transformative infrastructure potential of his Build Back Better plan.

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.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh participated in a round table on October 13 at Atlanta Local 613 that focused on low wages and other workplace issues harmful to workers. At the event, Rep. Nikema Williams said workers lose $15 billion annually to wage theft, and highlighted the U.S. Department of Labor's work to prevent it.

 

“I'm glad to work with you and the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division in enforcing the Standard Act so Georgia workers get the pay they are due,” Williams said to Secretary Walsh.