Pot Holes & Politics, May 27, 2010
As we head into Memorial Day weekend, I wanted to share with you my general thoughts about infrastructure in the Mid-Atlantic Region. For the record, our region is made up of the following states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia. As you can see we run the gamut from Right to Work states (Virginia) to Pennsylvania and Maryland, which are generally considered to be union-friendly states.
While Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are as different as night and day from Richmond and Raleigh-Durham, there is one uniting factor: All these cities have very high unemployment rates. When you look at the construction industry sector, those unemployment rates are close to 25%. We believe that everyone who wants a job should be able to get one. Full employment isn’t 6 or 7 percent, rather these rates should be in the 2 to 3 per cent range. You may call me a dreamer as the famous songwriter wrote many years ago, but this is something I wish our society as a whole would work towards.
As I travel around the region I am struck again and again about the differences in the suburbs versus our core cities. This probably goes without saying, but another difference that unites the cities and suburbs is the rate of deterioration in infrastructure: roads and bridges come immediately to mind. For example, there are over 5,000 bridges in Pennsylvania on a watch list; take Rte. 95 South from Washington to Richmond and you quickly lose count of the bumps and small-to-medium indentations in the road … or just take a leisurely drive in your area and check out the rust spots and exposed rebar on the bridges you drive under. Sometimes you see chunks of concrete that have fallen off and thankfully not hit you or your car. And gaping potholes are causing bad accidents to innocent people. It’s just crazy.
There is so much work to be done on our infrastructure right now (and I do believe it will become a public safety issue soon), that we could drive our high unemployment numbers down by simply training and putting people together to work on construction projects of all kinds across our region. The Mid-Atlantic region of LiUNA! has always held (since 1903) that workers should be paid a fair days wage, health care ,and a pension for the work they do. We stand for what is fair in the workplace, and for restoring the balance in our society by bolstering a middle class that has been slowly strangled. It’s really simple when you get right down to it. We are a union and this is what we do: We organize workers and negotiate with employers for those simple rights. (And I do not use this word advisedly!)
So, I hope your weekend is a fine one wherever you may be, and if you’re driving that you have a safe journey. My next post will be all politics, and I will leave you with this little teaser: No incumbents lost their primary races in the Pennsylvania State House elections on May 18.
