BUSINESS MANAGER’S
From Lou Antonellis Business Manager / Financial Secretary IBEW Local 103
Hello Brothers and Sisters —
REPORT
It’s been a long, cold, COVID winter, but the good news is that the COVID cloud that has been hanging over our head for the last year has been lifted. More people are being vaccinated, COVID hospitalizations are decreasing, economic spending is opening back up, and so is the work. President Biden continues to prove that he is Organized Labor’s champion. We finally have a President for the first time in most of our lifetimes who has made working folks and unions the centerpiece of his agenda. The Biden Administration is in constant, close consultation with the IBEW and President Lonnie Stephenson; and it paid off for us directly in the $1.9T economic stimulus package, The American Rescue Plan.
Included in that plan were direct payments to Americans who have been suffering and hurting due to lagging COVID unemployment. Also in the plan was the Butch Lewis Act provisions that will literally save many multi-employer defined benefit pension plans — Union Pension Plans! $86 Billion in direct payments will be made to underfunded plans in jeopardy of becoming insolvent, a critical allocation roadblocked time and time again by Senate Republicans in Congress. The Butch Lewis amendment was pushed by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and it was Lonnie Stephenson’s persistence and work behind the scenes that kept that language afloat and in Biden’s final bill. That piece of the bill is a huge win for Unions and multi-employer pension plans like ours, and a big win for working people. The Federal Government consistently bails out big corporations and the ultra-wealthy in this country; it’s about time that working people get some help from Congress! Next on President Biden’s agenda is his bold and aggressive Infrastructure Plan. Let’s face it, our country has been starved over the last several decades, not just of meaningful investment in infrastructure, but of investment in working people. Republicans in Congress want you to think a robust infrastructure and jobs investment is a Trojan horse for socialism and wasteful spending, but that is the same old tired trope used to hold working people and unions down! The American people have been waiting decades for an investment in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, and it reaches far beyond roads and bridges, as it should. We need those investments in modern infrastructure and technology, as well. We do need to fix our highways, roads and bridges, but we also need to modernize public transit, electrify Amtrak, upgrade our shipping ports and airports, invest in electric vehicles (500K EV Charging Stations), invest in retrofitting our homes, schools and commercial buildings for weatherization and efficiency, and invest in broadband infrastructure and upgrades to the nation’s power grid, including power plants and substations. 103 TODAY | SPRING 2021
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