Unions representing workers in the construction industry are urging the Senate to quickly pass the Keystone XL pipeline and warning President Obama not to veto the project.
In a letter to senators dated Thursday, Sean McGarvey, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation’s 3 million-member Building and Construction Trades Department, pleaded with lawmakers to back the project, which he said would create more than 42,000 jobs, citing a March 2012 State Department report.
“Our members are adamant in their belief that the economic, energy security and national security benefits associated with the construction of this pipeline are too important to allow it to be delayed any longer,” McGarvey said. “The time is long past to put America’s skilled craft professionals to work on the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Terry O’Sullivan, president of the 500,000-member Laborers’ International Union of North America, said in a statement Friday the House’s vote to approve the project was exactly the kind of bipartisan problem-solving that voters indicated they wanted in last week’s election.
“The House vote is a call to end the politically-motivated delays that have kept family-supporting careers locked out of reach for thousands of men and women, and it is a step toward securing America’s energy future,” he said.
O’Sullivan slammed President Obama for belittling the project and said he now is the person representing obstruction in Washington: “We continue to hope that the message of last week’s election will sink in at the White House. Americans want action, jobs and a revitalized economy that the energy infrastructure boom has brought — not continued gridlock.”
Organized labor is not uniformly behind the project, however. The AFL-CIO itself has not issued a statement on the House approval and has taken a generally neutral stance on the project, reflecting divisions within its own federation.
It appears, however, to have recently warmed to the project. “There are a number of economic issues and job issues that we want them to get done. That happens to be one of them. So the answer is ‘yes.’ We want to get every jobs issue that we can out and as many jobs created as we can to get the economy going,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last week, during a post-election press conference. An AFL-CIO spokesman clarified afterward that the statement did not amount to a formal endorsement of the project, though. The Building and Construction Trades Department is an independent group inside the AFL-CIO.
The pipeline would ship oil from Canada through the U.S. and to the Gulf of Mexico. The project has been in limbo since 2011 when environmental groups urged President Obama, who had previously leaned toward the project, to oppose it.
Legislation to approve the project is scheduled to be voted on Tuesday in the Senate, where the odds of passage are much narrower.
