Posts from David McCall

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.