Posts tagged Inflation Reduction Act
Unions rally in Pittsburgh against Trump’s cuts to worker protections and research funding
July 23, 2025 // The event was a stop on the AFL-CIO’s “It’s Better in a Union: Fighting for Freedom, Fairness & Security” bus tour. Labor leaders including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, USW International President David McCall and Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council President Darrin Kelly took the mic to address the impacts of the administration’s cuts to university research funding, Medicaid and the firing of workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, both in Pittsburgh and across the country. After the speeches, volunteers handed out a sheet of paper with a phone number to reach the House of Representative and a QR code with a prewritten email in support of a discharge petition to force a vote in that chamber on the Protect America’s Workforce Act, a bill that aims to reverse Trump’s executive order that eliminated collective bargaining rights for federal workers.
Opinion: Mitch McConnell: Nippon Steel Isn’t the Enemy
January 10, 2025 // In Georgetown, Ky., hundreds of skilled workers build automotive parts at a facility owned by Nippon Steel. About 5 miles away, another Japanese firm, Toyota, employs nearly 10,000 people full-time at the company’s largest vehicle-manufacturing plant in the world. Toyota recently announced more than $2 billion in new investments to expand and modernize its facilities there. Japan likely wonders why the Biden administration considers a major investment in American jobs and manufacturing a national-security risk but not its purchase of cutting-edge American military technologies.
There’s a huge pay raise on the way for clean energy workers
December 9, 2024 // To qualify, projects have to hire registered apprentices, who are paid for their work and earn credentials while doing it, and pay the prevailing wage to their workers, a level of minimum pay generally set for workers on government contracts. While prevailing wage has "long applied" to federal projects, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, this is the first time it's been applied to clean energy tax incentives.
Bernie Moreno, former car dealer elected to Senate, says Fain is a hack not helping workers
November 12, 2024 // Moreno did try to save jobs back in 2018 when General Motors announced it would permanently close its Lordstown Assembly plant in northeast Ohio, which built the Chevrolet Cruze sedan. As the Free Press reported in 2019, Moreno met with GM leaders, proposing to buy 150,000 to 180,000 Cruze cars to start a global ride-hailing company similar to Uber. GM CEO Mary Barra rejected the idea. GM shuttered Lordstown that spring.
Union leaders come together for Harris
October 21, 2024 // Some of the nation's largest unions are launching a new get-out-the-vote effort to support Vice President Harris. AFCME President Lee Saunders and AFT President Randi Weingarten join The Weekend to discuss their efforts to win in key states.
IRS Agents Union Endorses Kamala Harris, Cites Inflation Reduction Act Windfall
September 24, 2024 // “The administration also delivered agency budgets that provide federal employees with additional staffing and resources, including significant new investments to rebuild the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act.” Indeed, the Inflation Reduction Act, for which Harris cast the deciding vote to break a Senate deadlock, boosts the IRS budget by $80 billion, enabling the agency to hire an additional 87,000 employees – while increasing the union’s membership in the process. However, the IRS expansion won’t just increase union membership, it’ll also help the agency to collect an additional $5 trillion of tax increases Harris wants, analysis by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) finds:
This Pennsylvania battery plant just voted to unionize—here’s why it matters
September 10, 2024 // Eos Energy has received a roughly $400 million conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy and has also received millions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Section 45X advanced manufacturing production tax credit, designed to incentivize production of renewable energy components such as batteries. If the company expands production as planned, Eos will be eligible for $1.98 billion in Section 45X tax credits between 2026 and 2032. Legislators framed the Inflation Reduction Act as a source of “good-paying union jobs” within the renewable energy sector. But the legislation did not require companies receiving federal funds to commit to union neutrality agreements.
Workers Say Plant Eligible for $2 Billion in Public Funds Is Union-Busting
September 4, 2024 // Eos’s Pittsburgh-area battery plant got subsidies aimed at ‘good clean jobs.’ Its workers say they’re getting fired for unionizing.
Sean Higgins: Inflation has ruined progress on wages
September 2, 2024 // A new Labor Department rule promises to crack down on this alleged “worker misclassification.” The Federal Trade Commission also promised to crack down on the practice, though it hasn’t issued a rule to date. The Labor Department’s rule will make companies wary of hiring contract workers. Never mind that many workers prize the flexibility this freelance work allows. So workers have fewer options in the traditional jobs they could apply for, and fewer opportunities to earn a living through non-traditional methods such as freelancing. Wage growth has been largely wiped out by inflation. In short, the current administration couldn’t stick the landing for the economy as it recovered from the lockdown.
Unpacking Kamala Harris’ record on federal workforce issues
July 26, 2024 // As vice president, Harris led a White House task force that made recommendations for how agencies could reduce barriers for public and private sector workers to organize or join a union. In the year after agencies began implementing these recommendations, the number of federal employees who are dues paying members of a union increased by 20%. “We are fighting to protect the sacred right to organize. We are protecting the sacred right to organize because we know when unions are strong, America is strong,” Harris said at a Service Employees International Union convention in May.