Category Archives: Legislative & Political

Presiden Biden Celebrated Labor Day with IBEW Members

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President Biden spent the day dedicated to workers with members of the IBEW.

Along with IBEW President Lonnie Stephenson, President Biden delivered sandwiches to members of Wilmington, DE Local 313 on Labor Day, Sept. 6.

He played cornhole and chatted with about 35 members of the local union. An article about the event described a moment when “the president began talking into an iPhone to a union member’s mom, telling her that he’d been with the union since he was first elected to public office in the early 1970s.”

“I’m with your son,” Biden said. “Mom, I wish you were here. I just stopped by to thank these guys. Happy Labor Day.”

IBEW International President Lonnie Stephenson called Biden “a longtime friend of working families and the IBEW.”

Stephenson wrote in February 2020, “Joe Biden has listened to IBEW members, and his energy policy has been shaped by deep, meaningful conversations with the professionals who will build and maintain the energy grid of the future.”

Biden’s interest in getting IBEW members’ point of view was further evidenced when Local 24 member Cory McCray, a state senator in the Maryland General Assembly, was recently invited to the White House.

Read the IBEW’s BUILDING AMERICA BACK BETTER newsletter for the whole story.

President Biden’s Agenda Is Working For The IBEW

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Negotiating A Bipartisan Deal With Congress For More Jobs, Cleaner Infrastructure

President Joe Biden proposed the largest investment in American
infrastructure since World War II back in March. Four weeks later,
he renewed his call for the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan during
an address to Congress, with the IBEW at the heart of his pitch.
Today, President Biden and Congress are working to pass a bill
that will upgrade America’s flagging infrastructure, better position
the U.S. as a global competitor and aggressively combat climate
change.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework deal that was
announced on June 24 includes plans to modernize the electric
grid, expand access to broadband internet, invest and electrify
the transportation sector, including public passenger rail, ports,
roads, bridges and airports. The framework will create and
sustain good-paying union jobs with strong labor protections.

“This is a once-in-a-generation chance to set America on a path to prosperity and prevail in the global economic challenges
we currently face,” said IBEW President Lonnie Stephenson.

Read the IBEW’s BUILD BACK BETTER newsletter for the whole story.

Biden’s Proposed American Jobs Plan

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Late last month, President Biden introduced his road map to recovery when he presented the American Jobs Plan. aims to repair critical infrastructure and create jobs. The Plan emphasizes Biden’s strong support of organized labor, using the word “union” 24 times.

Below you will find excerpts pulled directly from The Biden Administration’s March 31 Fact Sheet on The American Jobs Plan.

The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China. Public domestic investment as a share of the economy has fallen by more than40 percent since the 1960s. The American Jobs Plan will invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways and won the Space Race.

The United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world, yet we rank 13th when it comes to the overall quality of our infrastructure. After decades of disinvestment, our roads, bridges, and water systems are crumbling. Our electric grid is vulnerable to catastrophic outages. Too many lack access to affordable, high-speed Internet and to quality housing. The past year has led to job losses and threatened economic security, eroding more than 30 years of progress in women’s labor force participation. It has unmasked the fragility of our caregiving infrastructure. And, our nation is falling behind its biggest competitors on research and development (R&D),manufacturing, and training. It has never been more important for us to invest in strengthening our infrastructure and competitiveness, and in creating the good-paying, union jobs of the future.

Specifically, President Biden’s plan will:

Fix highways, rebuild bridges, upgrade ports, airports and transit systems.
The President’s plan will modernize 20,000 miles of highways, roads, and main-streets. It will fix the ten most economically significant bridges in the country in need of reconstruction. It also will repair the worst 10,000 smaller bridges, providing critical linkages to communities. And, it will replace thousands of buses and railcars, repair hundreds of stations, renew airports, and expand transit and rail into new communities.

Deliver clean drinking water, a renewed electric grid, and high-speed broadband to all Americans.
President Biden’s plan will eliminate all lead pipes and service lines in our drinking water systems, improving the health of our country’s children and communities of color. It will put hundreds of thousands of people to work laying thousands of miles of transmission lines and capping hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells and abandoned mines. And, it will bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American, including the more than 35 percent of rural Americans who lack access to broadband at minimally acceptable speeds.

Build, preserve, and retrofit more than two million homes and commercial buildings, modernize our nation’s schools and child care facilities, and upgrade veterans’ hospitals and federal buildings.
President Biden’s plan will create good jobs building, rehabilitating, and retrofitting affordable, accessible, energy efficient, and resilient housing, commercial buildings, schools, and childcare facilities all over the country, while also vastly improving our nation’s federal facilities, especially those that serve veterans.

Solidify the infrastructure of our care economy by creating jobs and raising wages and benefits for essential home care workers.
These workers – the majority of whom are women of color – have been underpaid and undervalued for too long. The President’s plan makes substantial investments in the infrastructure of our care economy, starting by creating new and better jobs for caregiving workers. His plan will provide home and community-based care for individuals who otherwise would need to wait as many as five years to get the services they badly need.

Revitalize manufacturing, secure U.S. supply chains, invest in R&D, and train Americans for the jobs of the future.
President Biden’s plan will ensure that the best, diverse minds in America are put to work creating the innovations of the future while creating hundreds of thousands of quality jobs today. Our workers will build and make things in every part of America, and they will be trained for well-paying, middle-class jobs.

Create good-quality jobs that pay prevailing wages in safe and healthy workplaces while ensuring workers have a free and fair choice to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively with their employers.
By ensuring that American taxpayers’ dollars benefit working families and their communities, and not multinational corporations or foreign governments, the plan will require that goods and materials are made in America and shipped on U.S.-flag, U.S.-crewed vessels. The plan also will ensure that Americans who have endured systemic discrimination and exclusion for generations finally have a fair shot at obtaining good paying jobs and being part of a union.

THE ENTIRE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FACT SHEET CAN BE FOUND HERE

Keep The GROW Act Out Of The Next Stimulus Package!

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IBEW International President Stephenson Urges Members
To Contact Congress In Opposition To The GROW Act

In a letter dated July 23, 2020, President Lonnie Stephenson directed business managers and local officers to get the word out to IBEW members – multiemployer pension plans like ours are in jeopardy again, due to an act that is part of the new stimulus package in Congress.

To protect your pension, all members are asked to call your senators and representatives
to oppose the inclusion of the GROW Act in the upcoming stimulus bill.

Click here to find your representative or senators.

In his letter, President Stephenson explained “It is anticipated that the United States Congress and Trump Administration will consider a final pandemic stimulus bill in the coming weeks. One of our major concerns is the potential inclusion of the Give Retirement Options to Workers (GROW) Act, which would allow multiemployer pension trustees to divert contributions from an existing defined benefit multiemployer pension plan to a new composite plan with inferior benefits and not enough money to fund both plans. The GROW Act would subject workers and retirees to dramatic benefit cuts and allow employers to leave existing plans without paying their share of the plans’ liabilities.”

This fact sheet lays out a summary of concerns regarding the GROW Act. In addition, in a letter to the U.S. Congress, President Stephenson expressed the IBEW’s support for an alternative plan to assist ailing pension plans, the Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act. A link to the letter is below, along with other resources on this issue.

You can contact the Political & Legislative Affairs Department at political@ibew.org if you have any questions.

 

Stephenson Letter To Congress On Multiemployer Pension Reform

GROW Act and Composite Plans

Composite Plan Actuarial Study WCT July 2020

 

Families First Coronavirus Response Act: Employer Paid Leave Requirements

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The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA or Act) requires certain employers to provide their employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19.[1] The Department of Labor’s (Department) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) administers and enforces the new law’s paid leave requirements. These provisions will apply from the effective date through December 31, 2020.

Qualifying Reasons for Leave:

Under the FFCRA, an employee qualifies for paid sick time if the employee is unable to work (or unable to telework) due to a need for leave because the employee:

  1. is subject to a Federal, State, or local quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19;
  2. has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine related to COVID-19;
  3. is experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and is seeking a medical diagnosis;
  4. is caring for an individual subject to an order described in (1) or self-quarantine as described in (2);
  5. is caring for a child whose school or place of care is closed (or child care provider is unavailable) for reasons related to COVID-19; or
  6. is experiencing any other substantially-similar condition specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Secretaries of Labor and Treasury.

 

Duration of Leave:

For reasons (1)-(4) and (6): A full-time employee is eligible for up to 80 hours of leave, and a part-time employee is eligible for the number of hours of leave that the employee works on average over a two-week period.

For reason (5): A full-time employee is eligible for up to 12 weeks of leave at 40 hours a week, and a part-time employee is eligible for leave for the number of hours that the employee is normally scheduled to work over that period.

For leave reasons (1), (2), or (3): employees taking leave shall be paid at either their regular rate or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $511 per day and $5,110 in the aggregate (over a 2-week period).

For leave reasons (4) or (6): employees taking leave shall be paid at 2/3 their regular rate or 2/3 the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $200 per day and $2,000 in the aggregate (over a 2-week period).

For leave reason (5): employees taking leave shall be paid at 2/3 their regular rate or 2/3 the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $200 per day and $12,000 in the aggregate (over a 12-week period—two weeks of paid sick leave followed by up to 10 weeks of paid expanded family and medical leave).

 

Source: U.S. Department of Labor https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/pandemic/ffcra-employer-paid-leave

PRO Act Introduced To Strengthen Workers’ Rights

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Too often in recent years, corporations have come out on top in any dispute or issue that has pitted them against their workers. Even more distressing, laws that were supposed to guard the rights of working people, like the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), have been ineffective at shifting the balance of power back in favor of workers. However, a new bill has been introduced in Congress to remedy some of the inequality – H.R. 2474, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The PRO Act would strengthen important workers rights as well as add some needed teeth to the NLRA.

The PRO Act has 218 sponsors and strong support in the House of Representatives, but the support of working people is still crucial. Please take a few minutes to call your Representative at the number on this flyer. Ask them if they support the Pro Act, and whether they will vote for it. You can also write to your representative using this AFL-CIO link.

Employers have been able to violate the National Labor Relations Act without facing any repercussions for much too long now. They routinely deny workers our basic right to join with co-workers for fairness on the job. As a result, the collective strength of working people to negotiate for better pay and benefits has eroded and income inequality has reached levels that predate the Great Depression.

According to an article in The Washington Post on January 29, 2020, “this bill would give the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces federal labor law, new power to force companies to pay up to $50,000 per violation. It would also award (compensation to workers) for the damages they experience when they are retaliated against, not just back pay, as they are currently entitled to.”

The Post article outlines other crucial worker protections in the PRO Act, including

  • barring employers from permanently replacing striking workers
  • giving workers the right to file private lawsuits for violations of the National Labor Relations Act
  • addressing which workers qualify as employees, as opposed to independent contractors. The independent contractor classification has been an increasingly popular way for employers to thwart organizing campaigns, shirk responsibilities for things like benefits, and avoid workers compensation claims and lawsuits resulting from on-the-job injuries.

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act has been introduced to strengthen workers’ rights. PLEASE contact your U.S. Representative about this important bill today.

Support Needed for Baltimore Project Labor Agreement (PLA)

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Baltimore City Council is introducing Project Labor Agreement Legislation at its meeting, Monday 1/27 at 5 p.m. at the City Council Building (100 N. Holiday Street, Suite 400, Baltimore, MD).

The Baltimore & D.C. Building Trades is asking all construction tradespeople, especially those who live in the city of Baltimore, to attend the City Council meeting to show support for this important legislation. Please plan to come out for the meeting TONIGHT!

This legislation would require a Project Labor Agreement on city funded projects over $25 million, or any long term project that covers multiple locations over $15 million.

 

Project Labor Agreements:
  • Have been used for decades for public and private sector projects, including for significant projects in Maryland.
  • Increase project efficiency by setting uniform ground rules that apply to all contractors working on the project.
  • Help project owners ensure that all goals are met on the project and that the project is completed in a timely way.
  • Help prevent wage theft from workers, which has become an epidemic in the Construction industry.
  • Are competitive agreements that do not prevent any contractors from bidding.
  • Are a great tool for encouraging local hiring and connecting multi-employer apprenticeship programs to projects that have guaranteed work force outcomes. Project Labor Agreements help create careers for people in construction, not just jobs.

 

Project Labor Agreements DO NOT:
  • Discriminate against non-union workers. Anyone willing to work under the terms of the agreement is free to apply for work on the project. In fact, federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on whether they are union members.
  • Discriminate against non-union contractors. Any contractor is allowed to bid and be awarded work on the project. Non-union contractors are awarded work on projects covered by PLAs.
  • Project labor agreements are not “UNION ONLY.”

 

CALL TO ACTION: The Fight Is On To Protect Our Pensions

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Stephenson: ‘They Are Trying to Kill America’s Multiemployer Pension Plans’

IBEW International President Lonnie R. Stephenson is asking active and retired IBEW members to keep up the pressure on lawmakers to reject a disastrous multiemployer pension plan circulating in the Senate.

The plan, introduced by Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), is a recipe for the ruin of IBEW multiemployer pension plans, including the National Electrical Benefit Fund.

Members across the country have answered the urgent call since it went out a month ago, with hundreds of calls and meetings at Senate field offices.

“But as long as this proposal is still out there, we are not done,” Stephenson said. “We are not going to rest until this plan is officially dead.”

The white paper, titled the “Multiemployer Pension Recapitalization and Reform Plan,” is a wish list of tenets the conservatives are demanding be included in legislation to reform the multiemployer pension system, which is in crisis due to the imminent insolvency of several large plans. The failure of these plans, including Teamsters’ Central States, could threaten the security of the government insurance program that protects pensioners should their plan become insolvent, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

“They claim they are trying to help troubled pensions but the truth is that they are trying to kill America’s multiemployer pension plans, including ours,” President Stephenson said in a video message to members.

One retiree from Idaho, a 35-year member, sent a letter to Sen. Mike Crapo, explaining that he and his wife – who is also a member – participate in two negotiated multiemployer defined benefit plans.

“These are plans we rely on for most of our retirement security and ours are some of the healthiest of these plans that exist,” said the Pocatello Local 449 member. “Many times, we have taken the responsible steps of increasing contributions to these plans to ensure that they have remained ‘healthy’ — investing in our futures rather than diverting our available monetary resources to wages during our negotiation process with our employer partners.”

We anticipate that the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Chuck Grassley, and the Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Lamar Alexander, will be holding hearings in the coming months on this plan.

HOW BAD IS IT?

Released November 20, 2019, the Grassley-Alexander plan would:

  • Drastically raise fees on healthy pension plans like the NEBF
  • Increase the amount of taxes retirees pay on benefits, up to 10 percent
  • Turn “green zone” (healthy) plans into “yellow” or “red” zone (endangered or critical) plans, thus forcing the reduction of benefits and increasing taxes on pensioners

Click here for more details of this plan.

IBEW RESPONSE, BY THE NUMBERS

In-person meetings, telephone calls, emails and letters as well as traditional and social media are being used to get the word out to senators. Here’s a snapshot of what’s happened so far:

  • More than 500 direct, in-person interactions with senators and in-state staff. Feedback from offices varies from “we were unaware” to “we’ll look into it” to “we’re opposed.”
  • More than 3,600 calls made to senators via the AFL-CIO hotline: (844) 551-6921
  • Kansas City, Mo., Local 124 members sent nearly 650 cards to senators opposing the plan
  • Local unions across the country have set up informational websites and are including the issue in newsletters and at local union meetings
  • IBEW members are sharing and engaging with social media posts, including the “Don’t Bankrupt my Retirement Security” meme, Electrical Worker article and a video featuring President Stephenson. The total number of people who have seen these posts is more than 500,000.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Make the IBEW’s strong opposition to the Grassley-Alexander plan known to lawmakers by:

  • Showing up at official and campaign events
  • Scheduling meetings at in-state offices
  • Calling Senate offices at (844) 551-6921. Here’s a sample script. Click here for additional talking points.
  • Sending a Letter to the Editor to your local newspaper
  • Spreading the word on social media. Here’s a graphic to post under #ProtectOurPension.

If You Think Trump Is Good For Union Members, Read This

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The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) issued a report earlier this month that details numerous ways in which President Donald Trump, through his appointees on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), has weakened worker protections and rights, and given employers ever more power.

In a press release dated October 16, 2019, the EPI said

Examples of harmful actions the Trump NLRB has taken or proposed include:

  • Undermining collective bargaining rights by giving employers more power to make unilateral changes without consulting with the union, gerrymandering bargaining units to undermine organizing drives, and withdrawing recognition from existing unions
  • Stripping tens of thousands of student workers and Uber drivers of their right to organize under the National Labor Relations Act
  • Narrowing the definition of “joint employer” – which makes it harder for temporary and contract workers to bargain with the firms that control their wages and working conditions
  • Giving employers more power to prevent workers and union organizers from organizing and protesting on the employer’s property, even when employers let other groups on their property to solicit

“The Trump NLRB has systematically rolled back workers’ right under the NLRA and they show no sign of slowing down,” said Lynn Rhinehart, one of the report’s authors. “Congress has a responsibility to hold the NLRB accountable for their actions, and policymakers should pass legislation to restore and strengthen workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain.”

You can read the entire report and decide for yourself.

UNPRECEDENTED_The Trump NLRB’s attack on workers’ rights

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions. EPI believes every working person deserves a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, and retirement security. To achieve this goal, EPI conducts research and analysis on the economic status of working America. EPI proposes public policies that protect and improve the economic conditions of low- and middle-income workers and assesses policies with respect to how they affect those workers.