Fixing America’s infrastructure one career at a time

As the presidential campaign heats up this fall, one of the few topics on which both candidates seem to largely agree is the need for our country to seriously invest in fixing, improving and expanding public infrastructure. Both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have announced plans to pour billions into infrastructure.

The Clinton campaign has put the amount at $275 billion over five years, while Trump has vowed to double that. Many experts believe even those amounts are not enough to improve our existing roads, bridges, ports, airports and other major transportation and utility infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given America a D+ in its most recent report card on the state of our infrastructure and earlier this year estimated we will need to spend $1.4 trillion between now and 2025 and $5.2 trillion by 2040.

In addition to the benefits this would bring to our economy by allowing goods to be moved faster and more efficiently, creating a true and lasting national infrastructure plan will create jobs. Currently, some 14.5 million Americans work in infrastructure-related jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than in education or manufacturing. Increasing spending on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars would of course add significantly to that number.

Of course, this begs an important question: What kind of jobs? Will the people who build and maintain everything from highways to water tunnels to electricity grids be climbing the ladder into the middle class or will they be mired at the bottom of the economic rung, left without decent pay, health care, benefits or job security?

It is vital that as we expand economic opportunities, we do it in a way that actually helps the people who will be gaining those opportunities. People need not only jobs; they need jobs that allow them to live, work and raise a family in their communities. They need jobs that provide benefits and protections should they be injured, jobs that give them the ability to save for retirement and send their children to college. Historically in America, these types of blue-collar jobs, and the dignity and stability they provide workers, have been achieved via unions.  

We hear a lot of negative rhetoric about unions from politicians and business leaders alike. But it was the union movement that gave our society the 40-hour, five-day workweek; paid overtime; workplace safety standards; and the creation of OSHA, which ensures that people are protected at potentially dangerous worksites. It was unions that pushed for health benefits and paid sick time.

Starting in the era of the Gilded Age, it was the labor movement – galvanized later by the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Lower Manhattan in 1911 – that helped create the nation’s first building codes, mandatory stairwells and fire safety regulations, all of which have undoubtedly saved countless lives in the century since.

So as we pause to recognize and honor hard-working men and women on Labor Day, let’s not lose sight of what organized labor has achieved for this country. It has allowed generations of Americans to rise above abject poverty and inequality imposed on working class people, especially in the latter half of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. Those times are remembered for lavish mansions and lifestyles of the super-wealthy, which were fed by low wages and work exploitation.

The gains we have made did not come without struggle and we must be vigilant to ensure that new jobs now and in the future help workers join in the effort to move our country forward, rather than get left behind in poverty and uncertainty.

Robert Bartels, Jr. is a 35-year piping industry veteran and Business Agent-at-Large of the 8,500-member Steamfitters Local 638. Steamfitters design, install and maintain critical fire sprinklers, piping, heating and cooling systems in tens of thousands of high-occupancy commercial, residential and industrial buildings throughout the New York region.