President's Perspective Archive

Bobcat’s management forced Ethan Fitch and his co-workers into a series of mandatory town-hall meetings and then subjected them to anti-union harangues aimed at thwarting their union drive.

The attacks unsettled workers at the Rogers, Minn., plant, just as the bosses intended. But Fitch and other activists continued to rally workers around the need for a union, succeeded in building solidarity, and ultimately led the group into the United Steelworkers (USW) last year.

While he always remained confident that the union drive at his factory would succeed in spite of the company’s scare tactics, Fitch welcomed a new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that spares other workers the kind of fearmongering and bullying his colleagues overcame.

The NLRB—an agency charged with enforcing labor rights—ruled Nov. 13 that Amazon illegally compelled warehouse workers to attend anti-union captive-audience meetings that it used to divide workers and crush organizing drives.

It’s the latest in a series of decisions safeguarding organizing and bargaining rights under the stronger, more vigilant NLRB put in place by President Joe Biden.

“Ensuring that workers can make a truly free choice about whether they want union representation is one of the fundamental goals of the National Labor Relations Act,” wrote board Chair Lauren McFerran in the ruling against Amazon.

“Captive-audience meetings—which give employers near-unfettered freedom to force their message about unionization on workers under threat of discipline or discharge—undermine this important goal,” she added.

The groundbreaking decision ends one of corporate America’s most prevalent and despicable union-busting tactics, helping to even the scales for workers. Companies across the country annually dropped hundreds of millions of dollars on hired-gun “union-avoidance consultants” to run these brainwashing sessions and conduct other anti-worker activities.

Instinct told him to run.

But David Simmons stood his ground, took his time even though the seconds ticking away felt like hours, and shut down the flaming machinery at a Southern California oil refinery, averting tragedy.

Simmons chuckles as he relates the story years later, recalling how water from the fire brigade’s high-pressure hoses bounced him around as he wrestled a wrench around a valve in order to close it.

Because so many workers have jobs requiring them to prove their mettle every day—those on the front lines in steel mills, chemical plants, nuclear energy sites and hospitals, among others—Simmons expects America’s president to model courage, too.

Not the toxic, divisive bravado of Donald Trump, stresses Simmons, but the inspiring, unifying fortitude of Kamala Harris, who’s calmly stood her ground in the face of craven attacks, laid out real plans for moving the nation forward and focused, just like he did at the refinery, on getting a tough job done.

“She hasn’t gone dark or mean,” noted Simmons, a longtime member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675 who formerly served as a union health and safety representative at a Phillips 66 facility. “She decided, ‘I’m going to be a positive force. I want to be the face of something positive.’”

“We have somebody who’s been responsible, been a great asset to our country,” he said of Harris, noting she entered the race with full understanding of the vitriol she’d face from opponents who have nothing to offer voters but hate. “Do you know how much courage it takes to say, ‘I’m going to go through this anyway?'”

“She isn’t afraid to go into the belly of the beast,” observed Simmons, who's anvassed voters and worked phone banks for Harris’ campaigns.

The unshakable resolve she’s shown in recent months is nothing new.

Simmons, a longtime political activist and labor board representative, noted that Harris overcame numerous naysayers and detractors in 2003 to win a longshot bid for district attorney of San Francisco.

James Evanoff began earning a pension while working at a UPS warehouse in 2001 and continued adding to it when he switched to a job at a small chemical company in suburban Cleveland.

But then a wave of insolvency roiled multiemployer pension funds, threatening to wipe out everything that he and 1.3 million other workers nationwide had spent years—in some cases, decades—building.

Fortunately, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio stepped forward with an unshakable resolve to save their retirements. He spent five years fighting for legislation to shore up the failing plans and ultimately pushed the bill over the finish line in 2021 without a single Republican vote.

Among the 535 members of Congress, only a handful stand with working people so faithfully, and so passionately, that they’re considered part of labor’s family.

Brown is one of them.

“My opinion is, he’s the working people’s champion,” said Evanoff, now a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 979 who works at the Cleveland-Cliffs mill in Cleveland. “There’s no other way to describe him. He cares about working people, not big business.”

This year alone, Brown joined the USW’s effort to rebuild the domestic shipbuilding industry, helped to secure duties on several countries unlawfully undercutting U.S. shopping bag producers, and urged new limits on imports of oil country tubular goods to support workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And by assailing China’s scheme to dump steel in U.S. markets via Mexico, he’s working to preserve jobs at Evanoff’s mill and others like it.

Just as important, Brown understands that workers need not only a good paycheck but a seat at the table and safe working conditions. He’s a top proponent of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a USW-backed bill that would empower more workers to form unions, and his advocacy with federal safety agencies continues to protect workers from cancer-causing silica and other workplace hazards.

Russell McCarthy takes two forms of insulin, along with various other medications, to help control the diabetes that’s plagued him for decades.

As he worked to lower his blood sugar levels, the prices of his prescriptions continued to rise, costing him thousands of dollars out of pocket every year.

But then President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took a step at once compassionate and sensible. They capped insulin at $35 a month for all Medicare recipients, annually saving retirees like McCarthy thousands of dollars that they’re able to use to pay other bills, spend on local businesses or otherwise pour into the economy.

Even as McCarthy relishes this additional security, however, he knows that the future of accessible, affordable health care will be at risk in the Nov. 5 election.

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate two years ago to overcome Republican obstructionism and pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the legislation that curbed skyrocketing insulin costs and delivered other kinds of health care savings to millions of retirees.

Now, Harris wants to build on the IRA, improve the nation’s care system and continue to cut patient costs.

Donald Trump wants to drag the nation backward. His supporters already circle like vultures, eager to conspire with him to roll back the IRA, restrict access to health services, and free drug companies to exploit seniors all over again.

“I am insulin-resistant. I use a lot of insulin,” explained McCarthy, a former steel mill worker and United Steelworkers (USW) activist in Mansfield, Mass., who estimates the $35 cap saves him about $530 a month and nearly $6,400 a year. “The money comes in handy, for sure.”

McCarthy, 70, who’s had complications with his eyes, feet and heart because of diabetes, left the mill and changed careers long before retirement. While he occasionally delayed picking up a prescription to stretch his money over the years, other retirees faced a much grimmer scenario before the IRA.

It broke Cynthia Overby’s heart over the years to see her students struggle to afford menstrual products, try to get by without them or skip school some days for the privacy of home.

The longtime teacher later worked with an Illinois legislator to make these essentials available on college campuses and cheered when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation providing them in his own state’s public schools.

Overby, long active in the United Steelworkers (USW), knows that America’s greatness depends on lifting everyone up and providing opportunity to all. That’s why she became an educator. It’s the reason she’s devoted decades to civic and union activism.

And it’s why she’s voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Walz, in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Harris and Walz want to empower the disadvantaged, build the middle class and ensure retirement security, harnessing the enormous strides of the past four years to continue America’s march forward.

The other candidates, Donald Trump and JD Vance, threaten all of that. As the two bumble through a campaign devoid of decency, not to mention good ideas, they and their supporters stoop so low as to mock Walz’s kindness for others.

“That a man implemented a policy like that so warms my heart,” said Overby, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) in Granite City, Ill., who has a few choice words of her own for the out-of-touch, low-class Republicans who call Walz “Tampon Tim.”

When she taught children with varying abilities, she told her students, “Help each other.” Now, she devotes part of her retirement to a super-active SOAR chapter that fights childhood hunger, raises scholarships for college students, sends holiday gifts to U.S. troops overseas and supports a local emergency shelter for women and children.

She insists that America’s leaders not only demonstrate the same level of compassion but share her determination to level the playing field for others.

A knot formed in Sam Phillips’ stomach a few months ago when he learned that corroded titanium—sold with faked documents—somehow made it into doors and other components on civilian airliners.

It was exactly the kind of nightmare scenario that Phillips and other members of the United Steelworkers (USW) warned of while trying to save the nation’s last titanium sponge plant, located in Henderson, Nev.

TIMET closed the plant anyway in 2020, not only leaving America dependent on foreign supplies of a crucial industrial material but putting the nation’s security at risk.

Only domestic ownership of manufacturing supply chains—from the sourcing of raw materials like titanium sponge to production of goods like airplane components—will keep the nation strong.

Fortunately, the Biden-Harris administration grasps what’s at stake and delivered historic legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to revitalize the nation’s manufacturing economy and preserve America’s freedom.

It’s essential for Americans to own supply chains across all industries, Phillips said, noting foreign companies can cut off shipments of goods at any time and for any reason.

Even manufacturers in ostensibly friendly countries like Japan can encounter production delays or shift operations, affecting U.S. access to needed goods. Just as worrisome, as the airliner titanium scare shows, the long decline of domestic manufacturing capacity even left Americans at the mercy of rogue, corner-cutting producers operating in the shadows thousands of miles away.

“How did it get manufactured and actually put in a plane?” asked Phillips, former president of USW Local 4856.

“It doesn’t make me want to get on airplanes anytime soon,” added Phillips, who learned about the debacle while reading a New York Times article in June. “They should have U.S. titanium in them.”

Anthony Vergara took a job at the Gallo Glass plant in Modesto, Calif., years ago because it offered good wages, family-sustaining benefits and the support of co-workers as committed as he was to building a stronger community.

Together, they’ve bounced back from a series of fires, weathered global competition and triumphed over other challenges to keep America’s largest glass container factory operating around the clock.

But while they take pride in driving Modesto’s present prosperity, Vergara said he and 700 other members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 17M realize that only a transformational “reset” will ensure the factory’s long-term survival in a highly competitive, ever-changing worldwide industry.

Fortunately, they’re now able to forge that path forward because of cutting-edge technology funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate two years ago to pass the IRA and unlock billions for an advanced manufacturing economy.

Not a single Republican in either chamber of Congress voted for this historic legislation, which is revolutionizing the cement, chemical, glass and steel sectors along with other traditional core industries.

IRA-funded projects are increasing efficiency, reducing costs and shoring up supply chains, better positioning the nation to manufacture the goods needed both for domestic consumption and to trade with the world.

JD Vance, the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate, made statements on the campaign trail showing he neither understands the IRA nor knows what it does.

But America’s working people get it.

The IRA created more than 170,000 jobs at home so far. And it’s projected to create at least 1.5 million more in coming years, including dozens of new positions at the Gallo plant under a Department of Energy (DOE) demonstration grant program also funded partly by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Bill Baker and Maryanne Tracy realized that the deck was stacked heavily against them when a giant mortgage company illegally attempted to foreclose on them in the midst of the nation’s housing crisis more than a decade ago.

Fortunately, a powerful ally came to their aid—Kamala Harris, then the state’s attorney general. She held the bank accountable, saved their home and ended up the couple’s friend.

It’s exactly that kind of crusade for fair treatment of working people that’s fueling burgeoning support for Harris’ presidential bid. Growing numbers of Americans are realizing what Baker and Tracy learned years ago:

The vice president stands for an America that lifts everyone up and leaves no one behind on the march to a stronger, more prosperous future.

“This is personal to us,” Tracy said of herself and her husband, longtime activists with the United Steelworkers (USW). “She fought for us. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.

“She’s for the working class 100 percent. She always has been. She’s always been for the underdog, you know?” explained Tracy, noting that her mortgage company was one of several collectively forced to pay billions to resolve Harris’ investigation into abusive foreclosure practices.

Tracy, who later worked in the Alameda County district attorney’s office, and Baker, a former mechanic in California’s trade show industry who served as secretary-treasurer of USW Local 1304, credit Harris with helping them through one of the darkest periods of their lives.

It’s a story they retell now to help others understand what’s at stake as Harris runs for the White House to continue the principled, pro-worker agenda she launched with Joe Biden.

The two point out that while Harris helps to safeguard the American dream, her opponent glories in his record as a convicted felon and wannabe dictator who attacked labor rights and stacked the courts and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against working people.

Dave Harvey credits the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with helping him make it to a healthy retirement.

OSHA implemented a standard in 2016 dramatically reducing workers’ exposure to silica in many workplaces, including the Du-Co Ceramics Co. plant in Western Pennsylvania where Harvey spent decades making ceramic electrical components.

Harvey’s union, the United Steelworkers (USW), long pushed OSHA to enact the rule and protect workers across the country from airborne silica dust, generated during manufacturing processes and other kinds of work involving rock, sand, gravel and clay. The substance lodges deep in the lungs, contributing to cancer, silicosis and other life-threatening ailments.

It would be foolhardy now to return to dustier workplaces that put workers’ lives at risk. But Harvey knows this nightmare scenario is a real threat with a right-wing Supreme Court that’s already gutting labor rights and will almost certainly attempt to institutionalize the subjugation of workers if a Republican wins the White House in November.

“Just look at what’s happening,” warned Harvey, Pennsylvania coordinator for the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), referring to the court’s growing and alarming string of anti-worker decisions. “We’re going back in time, back to the way it was when unions were just getting started.”

In one particularly alarming case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court’s six pro-corporate justices overturned longtime precedent and slashed the authority of federal agencies to interpret laws and make regulations.

This ruling sets the stage for a potential rollback of hard-won regulations safeguarding working people, such as a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule mandating safer staffing levels at nursing homes, the OSHA silica standard that continues to protect Harvey’s former co-workers, and the similar silica standard for miners that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) enacted earlier this year at the urging of the USW and other unions.

Also at risk because of the decision are Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules and recently expanded Department of Labor (DOL) standards extending overtime to millions more workers when they work extra hours.

Kumho Tire herded workers into anti-union brainwashing sessions, fired union supporters, including a mother of seven who was eight months pregnant, and plastered the plant with anti-labor literature during the workers’ drive to join the United Steelworkers (USW) several years ago.

“They even had caps that said ‘Vote No,’” recalled Christopher Burks, who helped to lead the organizing effort. “The managers wore them, and they tried to hand them out to the hourly workers.”

Kumho broke so many laws during the desperate scorched-earth campaign at its Macon, Ga., plant that an administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took the extraordinary step of ordering the company to call workers together and read a statement admitting its egregious wrongdoing.

The workers ultimately stood up to Kumho, stayed the course and joined the union. But without the NLRB to hold the company to account, “we wouldn’t have won,” said Burks, who now serves his co-workers as president of USW Local 09-008.

Future victories like that are in jeopardy right now as right-wing extremists plot to regain control of the White House, gut Americans’ labor rights and subjugate workers to greedy corporations.

These fanatics coined a catchphrase for their attack on working families: Project 2025.

They’re scheming to replace Joe Biden, the most pro-worker president in history, with a Republican eager to neuter the NLRB, cripple similar agencies and roll back the gains workers continue making in Biden’s booming post-pandemic economy.

Biden not only empowered the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to better serve workers but created a White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment to give more Americans a pathway to the middle class.

But right-wingers view labor rights and safety regulations as so many impediments to corporate profits and control. So the cabal behind Project 2025 contrived a solution.

Sean Clouatre promised accountability, stability and transparency when he ran for alderman in his hometown of French Settlement, La., in 2022.

That was the commitment that his colleagues demanded of him years earlier when they elected him president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 620, the union representing hundreds of workers at BASF and Oxy plants in the state’s chemical manufacturing corridor.

And Clouatre knew that voters in the village of 1,000 desired the same kind of leadership as the community approached crucial decisions about finances, infrastructure and the future.

“The union gave me the knowledge and confidence to do this,” said Clouatre, who won his race for alderman, noting that the USW not only showed him how to stand up for others but instilled in him the true meaning of leadership.

Unions protect Americans’ freedoms. They model democracy, empowering members to elect leaders, vote on contracts and use their voice to advocate for safer working conditions along with other needs.

They also embody the nation’s highest ideals, bringing workers together to fight for fairness, inclusiveness and the level playing field that gives everyone an equal say and a shot at getting ahead.

“I have one vote, just like everybody else,” said Clouatre, an operator at the Oxy plant in Geismar, noting union members collectively set the union’s agenda and expect him to carry it out.

“We stand up for workers’ rights, and that’s what this country was founded on,” he said of unions. “We fight for those principles, still, to this day.”

The democracy fostered in the union spills over into the community. Union members vote at higher rates than other workers in congressional and presidential elections, for example, and their family members also turn out to vote more often than non-union households.

“To be clear: this is not just the result of any particular GOTV (get-out-the-vote) activity, but rather a function of being in a union, the transformative effect that it has,” wrote Tova Wang, visiting democracy fellow at Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, in a 2020 study.

Wayne Creasy turned the corner in his municipal work truck, saw emergency vehicles idling at the railroad crossing, and instinctively pulled over to help.

About 12 feet in the air, a railroad worker writhed in agony, pinned against his seat by a 39-foot-long, 1,500-pound slab of rail that fell from the claws of the crane he’d been operating.

Creasy—crew chief for the Bloomsburg, Pa., Public Works Department and president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1928—knew exactly what to do.

He summoned a town backhoe, moved a police car out of the way, and secured the backhoe’s chains to the piece of rail. Then he guided the backhoe operator, a fellow union member, as he hoisted the rail high enough for emergency workers to slide the man over the back of his seat to safety.

Decades of union empowerment prepared Creasy to act decisively and heroically on that summer day four years ago. Now, swift passage of federal legislation, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, would help build the same kind of leadership, skill and teamwork in communities nationwide.

“We try to rise above and beyond,” Creasy, a town worker for nearly three decades, said of his 10-person crew, responsible for snow-clearing, street paving, flood control, tree maintenance, the town park, an airport, traffic signals and many other community essentials. “If you know what to do, you do it.”

Some states unfairly deny public servants—not only road crews but sanitation, maintenance and office workers, among others—the same right to union membership that counterparts in the private sector enjoy.

A right-wing governor in Wisconsin signed legislation in 2011, for example, that essentially eliminated bargaining rights for public workers there. Florida’s anti-worker governor last year signed a law aimed at bankrupting and decimating public-sector unions, costing tens of thousands of workers their labor rights so far.

And Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature recently introduced several bills intended to strip public workers of their unions.

John Ralston went into bargaining with Transco last fall intending to negotiate one of the strongest union contracts in his three decades with the company.

Carmakers urgently wanted to get new vehicles to market. The railroads needed to get more autoracks—enclosed rail cars used to transport vehicles—into service.

And Ralston said he and his co-workers, who maintain autoracks and other rail cars at a sprawling yard in Logansport, Ind., had “more work than we could handle.”

He and other members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-00007 ended up exceeding their expectations, winning wage increases of 24 percent over three and a half years along with important benefit enhancements.

It’s one more example of the significant gains that workers across the country are making as the nation continues to add jobs, invest in manufacturing and meet growing demand for products ranging from aluminum and steel to automobiles, appliances and many other kinds of goods.

“They knew they were going to have to offer a pretty substantial wage increase in order to hire more people and keep them there,” Ralston, the local’s recording secretary and a bargaining committee member, said of Transco management.

“I think they knew they were going to have to do something. They really want to add a second shift. They really want to expand our operations,” added Ralston, who repairs the air brake systems on rail cars.

The hiring buzz at Transco reflects a nationwide trend.

Employers created 15 million jobs, hundreds of thousands of them in manufacturing, over the past three and a half years. The nation added another 272,000 jobs in May alone, beating economists’ projections, and workers are benefiting with strong wage gains that outpace the cost of living.

“The American middle class is seeing their economic standing improved. The strong wages and improving living standards are the main takeaway from this very strong jobs report,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the accounting firm RSM US, explained to The Washington Post.

Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, N.C., knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes.

So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing.

Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice and kept them safe on the job. And about two weeks ago, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.

They’re among a growing number of workers across the South eager to leverage the power of solidarity and build brighter futures, even as CEOs and Republicans in this part of the country still conspire to hold them down.

“It’s all about making life better,” said Williams, who also serves as a vice president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, noting that workers are organizing across numerous industries in a string of Southern states with traditionally low numbers of union members.

“The narrative on unions in the South needs to change,” she added, pointing out that growing numbers of workers are grasping the benefits of collective action and demanding their fair share in the booming post-pandemic economy.

“We’re here,” she said. “We’re strong. We’re standing up, and we’re fighting with all that we have.”

About 1,400 workers at the Blue Bird electric bus factory in Fort Valley, Ga., last year voted overwhelmingly to organize through the USW.

The vote was a breakthrough for workers on the front lines of a vital, growing industry. It also sent a pointed, defiant message to a Republican governor who lies about unions and tries to prevent Georgians from joining them.

On the heels of that monumental victory, autoworkers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., overcame Republican opposition and voted by a huge majority last month to unionize.

Management at Amfuel tried to bully Jo Tucker and her 200 co-workers—most of them Black women, a number of them single moms—into accepting dozens of unnecessary concessions in a new contract.

For four years, however, the manufacturing workers in Magnolia, Ark., remained strong and resolute as the company tried to break the union and wear them down.

And then, just as the workers prepared to launch an unfair labor practice strike a couple of weeks ago, Amfuel surrendered. Because of their unflinching solidarity, the workers beat back the concessions and won a contract with life-changing raises, additional holidays and other benefit enhancements.

“We didn’t lose anything,” noted Tucker, a negotiating committee member and the financial secretary for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 607L. “That was good.”

Employers frequently try to kill morale, punish workers, or force them into concessionary contracts by dragging their feet at the bargaining table. But as union members at Amfuel and other companies prove time and again, a united front sends the bullies packing.

“We all hung in there together,” Tucker said of the workers, who make fuel cells for military helicopters and fighter jets. “It wasn’t easy. But we prevailed, and I thank God that we did.”

“It was teamwork,” she added. “Everybody was working together.”

As the workers geared up for bargaining in 2020, Amfuel received an infusion of money from new investors and additional support from the Defense Department and local community leaders. The company embarked on a growth plan, intending to rely ever more heavily on the skilled work force. It even bragged publicly about giving workers a bigger voice on the job.

Yet Amfuel stunned workers with a contract proposal demanding nearly 70 concessions.

Among other untenable proposals, Amfuel wanted to abolish seniority, reduce vacation pay and eliminate the grievance process, which would have made it easier for management to try to eliminate workers for any reason or none at all.

Scott Cox sprinted across the field, slogging through ankle-deep water, to where his parents’ house stood moments before.

He found a mountain of debris from the EF5 tornado, a milk truck that the unusually powerful twister had flung into the yard, and his parents’ horse, bleeding, covered with welts, standing dazed near the remnants of the back deck.

And then Cox, a longtime member of the United Steelworkers (USW), heard his mother’s cries. He dug her out of the rubble by hand, saving her, only to lose his father, who was too injured even for CPR and perished along with 15 others in Smithville, Miss., that day.

The people of Smithville opened a domed tornado shelter following the April 2011 disaster, but that merely underscored America’s need for a comprehensive, forward-looking approach that empowers communities to fortify defenses, construct new bulwarks and avert climate-related destruction in the first place.

Now, thanks to President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the nation is building that kind of lifesaving resilience.

The USW-backed IIJA delivers billions for projects to end droughts, protect the coasts against hurricanes, harden infrastructure, build stronger buildings, and provide grants for storm-resistant safe rooms.

Mississippi alone received hundreds of millions so far, including $4.8 million announced just this month to upgrade two hurricane evacuation routes.

“The ultimate responsibility of the government is to keep people safe,” observed Cox, president of Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 9-8. “That’s the No. 1 priority—and not only safe from enemies foreign and domestic but also from natural disasters.

“Having these resources, I think, is very, very important, especially in rural areas,” continued Cox, describing the Smithville disaster as a “traumatic experience that won’t end.”

Tom Bixler and several hundred of his co-workers produced top-quality glassware at the Libbey Glass plant in Toledo, Ohio, over the years while keeping the aging equipment there operating through sheer grit.

They even set efficiency standards despite the steep odds and carried the company through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, all to ensure the sprawling manufacturing complex remained viable and a centerpiece of the local economy.

But while they’re rightly proud of all they’ve done to sustain the facility, Bixler and fellow members of the United Steelworkers (USW) know they need to continue innovating to build a more secure, sustainable future. They’re now embarking on a critical transformation of their plant that will not only safeguard Northwest Ohio’s glassmaking jobs for decades to come but help forge a new frontier in American manufacturing.

Bixler, president of USW Local 65T, joined U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk and U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur last week as they highlighted a federal grant award of up to $45.1 million that will enable the plant to install a pair of larger hybrid electric furnaces intended to boost efficiency, reduce pollution and expand employment.

The cutting-edge furnace technology—combining the advantages of oxygen fuel and electric melting to process the raw materials for glassmaking, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 60 percent—has the potential to set a new standard for the industry and revolutionize glass production nationwide.

And this commitment to the glass industry represents just one part of President Joe Biden’s initiative to grow the manufacturing economy with clean energy and union jobs. In all, his administration this month announced $6 billion for 33 decarbonization and modernization projects, deploying a range of new technology, in iron, steel, chemicals, refining, cement, pulp and paper, and other industries.

Historic union-backed legislation—the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act—will fund the grants.

“This is something that’s going to blaze a whole new trail,” said Bixler, a mold maker at Libbey for 41 years, who considers the federal grant, to be matched by the company, as Biden’s investment in workers who have worked so hard to preserve the plant and keep the community strong.

James Crawford served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps maintaining the radar systems on super-sophisticated warplanes built to fend off enemy attacks from air, sea and land.

But not once during his time in numerous ports as far away as Asia did he see a U.S. commercial vessel plying the seas, a sign, he now realizes, of another kind of threat to the homeland.

America’s security begins with skilled union workers manufacturing the goods, equipment and other essentials, including cargo freighters and tankers, needed to keep the nation independent and free.

And so Crawford joined fellow members of the United Steelworkers (USW) recently in taking action to resuscitate the country’s decimated commercial shipbuilding industry and end a growing, perilous dependence on Chinese shipping.

The USW and other unions filed a petition with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai seeking an investigation into China’s illegal predatory trade practices, unfair state support for its own commercial shipbuilding industry, and plot to dominate global logistics networks.

China’s network of policies—including massive subsidies for the industry, such as cash payments, tax incentives and other handouts—continues to kill competition in America and other countries. As a result, China not only controls an enormous percentage of the world’s commercial shipbuilding output but wields the power to cut off access to ships it builds and operates at any time, for any reason.

“You can’t go somewhere to fight if you’re weak at home,” observed Crawford, unit president for USW Local 3372-07 who works at Hunt Valve in Salem, Ohio, noting that the U.S. not only needs commercial ships to carry manufactured goods to the far corners of the world but to provide sealift capacity to the military in times of crisis.

The United States once had about 30 major shipyards with 180,000 workers and contracts for more than 70 commercial vessels a year. But tens of thousands of those shipyard jobs disappeared since the 1980s as China hijacked the industry.

Some shipyards, like the USW-represented complex in Newport News, Va., began focusing entirely on military contracts. Others, like the Sun Shipping and Dry Dock complex in Chester, Pa., once the world’s largest shipyard and a center of shipbuilding innovation, simply closed. A casino now occupies the property.

The widowed single mom attacked grocery shopping with the doggedness of a Marine on a mission.

To provide for her family in the face of corporate price-gouging, she bought off-brand items and selected eggs for protein instead of higher-costing meat. She even worked multiple jobs to keep the family solvent.

And despite the challenges she faced, she never complained, recalled Denny Mitchell, a longtime United Steelworkers (USW) activist who’s filled with admiration for the way the woman raised her family.

Ordinary working people like Mitchell’s friend continue to build America with humble heroism, even as the greedy rich try to cheat them not only at the checkout line but everywhere from the workplace to the halls of power.

“It’s a fight. It’s always a fight,” observed Mitchell, noting that Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick underscored the arrogance of the 1 percent when he flippantly suggested a few weeks ago that struggling families eat cereal for dinner.

Pilnick, who pockets millions in salary and incentive compensation, runs a corporation largely responsible for the rampant price-gouging in the nation’s grocery stores.

Kellogg’s jacked up prices by more than 14 percent over the past couple of years while announcing plans to shower shareholders with stock buybacks and dividends.

Other food-makers joined in the exploitation, raising prices, reducing the amount of product in their packaging or switching to cheaper, lower-quality ingredients that enable them to pad their bottom lines on unwitting consumers’ backs.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania released a report in December assailing numerous companies for “shrinking products to super-size profits.” Among many other examples, Casey revealed that General Mills quietly shaved 1.2 ounces from boxes of Cocoa Puffs in 2021 while Conagra started skimping on ingredients in its Smart Balance spread in 2022, “resulting in a watery product that sparked consumer backlash.”

Tanya Gaines and her co-workers launched a union drive 10 years ago because it was the only way to win livable wages, fair treatment and safe working conditions at the Golden Dragon copper tube manufacturing plant in Pine Hill, Ala., one of the state’s poorest areas.

Workers anticipated management’s opposition, but they felt blindsided when Alabama’s Republican governor at the time, Robert Bentley, also came out against the organizing drive and wrote a letter demanding they vote against the union.

Gaines and her colleagues stood up to Bentley’s bullying, joined the United Steelworkers (USW) and began building better lives.

More and more workers across the South seek the same path forward that union membership provides. But they’re still forced to defy Republican officials who’d rather toady to wealthy corporations than support workers’ fight for a fair economy.

Autoworkers in Alabama, for example, vowed to stay the course last month after the state’s current governor, Republican Kay Ivey, publicly rebuked their efforts to unionize a Mercedes-Benz plant.

Equally furious USW members and other workers in South Carolina demanded that Republican Gov. Henry McMaster correct course after he bragged during his state of the state address last month that he’d oppose unions “to the gates of hell.”

Unionizing is entirely the workers’ choice, a right guaranteed under federal law. And yet Ivey and McMaster stuck their noses where they didn’t belong, just like Bentley did with the workers at Golden Dragon in 2014.

“It was like a slap in the face,” Gaines, who grew up in a union family and learned the power of solidarity at a young age, said of Bentley’s interference.

“We’re here on site, doing the job. He had no idea of the problem it was to work here,” she added, recalling the exploitation that workers faced. “We need a voice. This is our voice.”

Gaines said she and her co-workers continue battling Golden Dragon over safety and other issues—a fight she can’t imagine waging without the protections and resources the USW provides.

Christopher Betterley arrived at the Altamont Veterans Facility in Buffalo, N.Y., a few years ago needing a home, a haircut and a fresh start after treatment for alcohol use.

He saw a sign tacked to the shelter’s dining room wall advertising jobs at the nearby Sumitomo tire plant, so he cleaned himself up, went for an interview and quickly impressed both management and leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 135L.

But while the new job opened doors for Betterley, it was really union solidarity that saved him. He learned the trade from longtime union tire builders, leaned on the USW family that rallied around him, and pieced his life back together.

As Betterley discovered, unions lift up all workers. They fight for fair treatment and look out for the most vulnerable. They provide a path forward.

“When they took a chance on me, it really was them giving me a second shot,” explained Betterley, who deployed to Afghanistan during his six-year year stint in the New York Army National Guard.

“I’m not shy about any of this. It’s what happened,” continued Betterley, who’s proud of his military service but acknowledged that the experience contributed to the tough times he encountered later on.

“Things weren’t very great in my life prior to me starting to work with the Steelworkers,” he said. “I was hungry to get back on my feet and turn things around for myself. Working with the Steelworkers union gave me an opportunity to be able to do that.”

Betterley, a New York native, never worked in a manufacturing environment or belonged to a union before. But Local 135L members showed him the ropes.

They explained the power of collective action and outlined the union contract, which makes the workers at Sumitomo some of the best compensated tire makers in the world.

Union colleagues also ensured that Betterley received steel-toed boots and other personal protective equipment to keep him safe on the job. They helped him secure overtime hours and access the additional skills that paved the way to even higher wages.

Mike Morales’s doctor advised him to take four weeks off for an important procedure, and the longtime crane operator readily agreed, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t lose a dime in pay or face other repercussions at work.

Morales’ union contract enabled him to step away from his job at the Chevron Phillips plastics complex in Pasadena, Texas, to attend to his health.

He received regular pay during his absence and returned to work when he was able to do so. Morales, a unit recording secretary with United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-227, recalled having just one concern during his convalescence—getting well.

Workers across the country need the same peace of mind while recovering from surgery or sickness. They need time to care for ill loved ones, bond with infants or welcome other new family members without risking their jobs or forfeiting the income needed to keep their households afloat.

And they need to be empowered to escape domestic violence, ensure family stability during a service member’s deployment or confront other emergencies without throwing themselves on the mercy of employers.

A bipartisan House committee recently released a “draft framework” of a leave plan, which would give states and employers new incentives to provide more workers with paid time off for emergencies. But that’s a far cry from the mandatory, universal and uniform leave available to workers in many countries.

Unfortunately, Americans’ access to paid leave right now depends largely on where they work and whether they’re fortunate enough to belong to a union. And many still have no paid sick leave at all, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

“It’s a great benefit to us,” observed Morales, who’s stayed at the Chevron Phillips site for 43 years partly because of the USW-negotiated leave allotment, which renews periodically and even enables him to take days off to help family members.

He empathizes with contract workers at the site, saying they face the same life crises as union counterparts but lack the weeks or days off needed to effectively deal with them.

Silica dust at the Genesis Alkali mine in Green River, Wyo., is so thick some days that Marshal Cummings can barely see a foot in front of him.

It blankets his clothes, clogs his respirator, coats his hair, blackens his mucus and lodges deep inside him like a ticking bomb.

Exposure to silica can lead to silicosis, a scarring and stiffening of the lungs that leaves miners gasping for air, and it’s also a cause of lung cancer, kidney disease and other major ailments.

Silica robs thousands of their health every year. But now, after years of fighting, Cummings and tens of thousands of surface and underground miners across the country are on the brink of achieving true protections and holding all mining employers accountable for the first time.

President Joe Biden’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) recently proposed a rule that would force employers to significantly reduce miners’ exposure to silica dust. It would also mandate air monitoring to ensure compliance with the new standard and require corrective actions when silica levels exceed the rule.

Cummings and his co-workers encounter silica dust while mining trona—a mineral used to make soap, glass and other essential products—and it’s also in the coal they use to power the mine complex.

“Even if you wear a mask, you are coughing up black stuff, and every time you blow your nose, it’s pitch black,” said Cummings, chief steward and safety committee member for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13214, who credits both his union and MSHA for moving the protections forward.

Silica dust, found in numerous types of rock, threatens all miners. So MSHA’s rule would cover not only Cummings, his colleagues and others in the trona industry, but workers at rock quarries and miners who produce coal, iron ore, copper, nickel, zinc and other critical materials.

MSHA wants employers to combat silica dust through a comprehensive hierarchy of controls. That includes engineering controls like ventilation and collection systems as well as administrative protections like ensuring miners have time to remove dust from their clothes, and providing workers with personal protective equipment (PPE).

The World War II veteran had no family by his side as he lay dying a few months ago, so Ella Wilverding and her union co-workers stepped into the role.

They took turns sitting vigil with the man, talking to him, holding his hand, and making him as comfortable as possible during his final days.

“We have a policy,” explained Wilverding, a certified nursing assistant (CNA) at the Oregon Veterans’ Home in Lebanon, Ore., and the president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9559. “No one dies alone.”

This is the kind of compassionate, top-quality care that ensues when responsible staffing levels empower nurses, CNAs and other nursing home workers to provide the time and attention that residents need.

Right now, states set their own staffing requirements, and some have none at all. Fortunately, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently took the first step in fixing this broken system of care by proposing minimum mandatory staffing requirements for nursing homes across the country.

CMS will take public comments for about two months before issuing a final rule—a window that enables advocates like Wilverding to shine a light on the incredible difference that robust staffing makes and to fight for standards strong enough to revolutionize an essential part of the health care system.

“I wish every facility could be like this,” Wilverding said of the Lebanon location, where she works with seven veterans on an average day shift.

Under Oregon law, each resident there receives at least 2.16 hours of CNA care every day, plus assistance and services from other staff members. Oregon’s staffing standards now rank among the strongest in the nation, but Wilverding champions further improvements, knowing that they would enable workers to provide ever-better care.

The Lebanon site consists of a dozen houses, with as many as 14 residents in each, spread among four neighborhoods on a manicured campus.

CNAs like Wilverding prepare meals, wash the dishes and handle laundry in addition to helping veterans with bathing, dressing and other tasks. If residents’ needs increase—such as when the staff mobilizes to provide around-the-clock end-of-life care, for example—the facility schedules additional workers for support.

She only wanted a few hours at her dying mother’s bedside.

But the woman’s bosses at Twin Rivers Paper in Madawaska, Maine, lacked all decency and forced her to the mill on overtime even though it was her day off.

About an hour and a half into the mandatory shift, the woman’s mother died. She left the mill heartbroken, exploited by an industry that continues to spurn workers’ basic need for work-life balance.

Now, workers are battling harder than ever to end this appalling mistreatment. They’re fighting back—at the bargaining table and at the state capitol—against inhumane mandatory overtime requirements that strain families to the breaking point and put lives at risk.

“It’s definitely caused a lot of heartache at the mill,” said David Hebert, financial officer and former president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 291, one of three USW locals collectively representing about 360 workers at Twin Rivers.

USW members long warned paper companies about the need to increase hiring and training to keep facilities operating safely and efficiently. Yet some employers preferred to keep working people to the bone.

Workers at Twin Rivers, for example, work a base shift of 12 hours. On top of that, to fill in the schedule, each can be drafted for an additional 12-hour shift every month regardless of whether they want the extra hours.

But it gets much worse.

Hebert and his co-workers also face the possibility of having a 12-hour shift extended with six hours of mandatory overtime, without warning or advance notice, virtually any day bosses choose.

And they’re often forced to pull multiple 18-hour days in a week, especially when winter cold and flu season exacerbates the company’s intentional understaffing. Many of these union members commute 45 minutes or more each way, meaning they get only a few hours of sleep at a time.

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

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 knowing that he and his 325 co-workers 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 two weeks ago 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 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.

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.

Seven members of the United Steelworkers (USW) union reported for their shifts at the former Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Wash., 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.

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.

Sgt. 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 the 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, Pa., 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.

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

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, Rep. Robert B. Aderholt of Alabama last month 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.

Rep. 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.

The heat index recently 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.

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 common-sense 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 co-workers. “Don’t worry about it.”