Posts from David McCall

Many of Cliff Tobey’s friends and neighbors struggled over the years to get their children to doctor’s appointments or pick them up when schools closed early during Minnesota’s brutal winters.

Lacking paid sick and family time, the United Steelworkers (USW) activist recalled, they used vacation days to cover family emergencies even if that meant working themselves to the bone the rest of the year without a real break.

That all changed this year because of Gov. Tim Walz. He signed a paid family leave act and other legislation that’s not only making Minnesota the “best state for workers”—as his administration declares—but showing working people across the country the kind of ally he’d be if elected vice president in November.

“What you see is what you get,” Tobey, the joint efforts and benefits coordinator for USW Locals 1938 and 2660, said of Walz, whose everyman sensibilities continue to fuel growing voter support for his campaign with presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “He’s just a regular guy.”

Walz’s grasp of the challenges facing working families led directly to Minnesota’s groundbreaking “sick and safe time” law, which took effect Jan. 1.

It enables workers to accumulate at least 48 hours a year to use for doctor’s appointments or to pick children up at school, attend a funeral or meet other obligations. Workers also may use the time because of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.

“This is amazing,” stressed Tobey, one of many taconite miners on Minnesota’s Iron Range who have worked with Walz for years, noting it especially helps families without the benefits and protections of a union contract. “You’ve probably never seen in your life a law written to the worker’s advantage like this one is.”

But Walz went even further to promote work-life balance, healthy families and workers’ well-being.

The same legislation that enacted sick and safe time also created a separate family and medical leave law, to take effect in 2026, providing extended and paid time off to workers facing a serious medical condition, a relative’s long-term illness, a loved one’s military deployment or other pressing needs.

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.