| Indiana Capital Chronicle
For The Republic
INDIANAPOLIS — U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touted Indiana’s new billions in federal infrastructure dollars — and the thousands of jobs created — during a visit to a union apprenticeship facility in Indianapolis on Thursday.
The trip came just ahead of Labor Day, which recognizes the American labor movement.
As of July, the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has sent $4.6 billion to Indiana for over 210 projects, according to President Joe Biden’s administration.
Sheet Metal Workers Local 20 has “ramped up” its apprenticeship programs to meet demand, Business Manager Trent Todd said. Buttigieg said such efforts lead to “good union careers.”
“Everybody here knows that one good career — one good union career — can change the trajectory of a family. It means homeownership becomes possible, means new educational opportunities become possible, for the next generation,” Buttigieg said.
“So if that’s true of one job, then we know 1 million good jobs and more can change the trajectory of entire generations,” he continued. “And that’s what we’re in the middle of right now.”
Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, visited the facility as part of a two-day tour of Indiana.
Sheet metal workers make, install and maintain heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems — better known as HVAC — as well as roofs, gutters and more. This union is part of the The International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART).
Buttigieg was joined by U.S. Rep. André Carson, a Democrat representing Indiana’s Seventh Congressional District, and Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO — the largest labor federation in the country.
“We’re investing in you: the American workers who make our country great,” Carson said, praising the SMART apprenticeship programs for “opening doors to new talent” that he said couldn’t be replaced by artificial intelligence.
Shuler emphasized union jobs as a way for Americans to “reclai(m) their power” over their futures.
The hunt for more people to fill needed jobs is a far cry from the economic devastation of 2008, Buttigieg said.
“What we’re doing right now — what we’re stimulating the private sector to do and what we are funding in the public sector — will test the productive capacity of this country,” Buttigieg said. “(That’s) from the raw materials themselves to, most of all, the skills and the readiness of the workforce that are going to shape those materials into the factories and the roads and the bridges and airports that we’re going to be counting on for the rest of our lives.”
His critics weren’t swayed.
“No amount of photo ops will change Pete Buttigieg‘s image as a failed secretary of transportation,” outgoing Indiana Republican Party Chair Kyle Hupfer said in a statement Wednesday.
The party criticized Buttigieg’s delayed online response to the hazardous waste released during a train derailment in Ohio earlier this year, as well as his handling of widespread flight cancellations and his personal travel during intensive rail-labor negotiations last year.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle covers the state legislature and state government. For more, visit indianacapitalchronicle.com.
