Guest Columnist - Matt Yonka
With the campaign season in full swing, we hear a lot of talk about rebuilding American manufacturing and creating good-paying jobs for the middle class. Too often, it’s all talk.
Empty words and promises are not going to restore American manufacturing or create good-paying jobs for our people. It takes shovel-ready projects to do that. It takes serious investments in rebuilding our nation’s energy infrastructure. If we’re going to bring back American manufacturing and put Americans back to work, we need to actually build things again.
Over the centuries, our nation’s workers have shaped the America we know and love by paving our highways, building our factories and power plants, laying our pipelines and building our homes.
American workers want and deserve the same opportunities as previous generations to build the economy and provide a better life for our families. We have opportunities; we just need to seize them. Here in Virginia, we have a shovel-ready project that can get the job done. It’s called the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
As president of the Virginia State Building & Construction Trades Council, I represent thousands of men and women across Virginia. We support this pipeline, and we believe it is critical to rebuilding our middle class and bringing back our manufacturing jobs.
Not only will it provide cleaner electricity and home heating to millions of our fellow citizens, it will also put thousands of Virginians back to work. By connecting our region to the most affordable and abundant supply of domestic energy, the pipeline will lower energy bills for all Virginians and fuel the resurgence of manufacturing.
Construction of the pipeline is estimated to generate nearly 8,800 jobs in Virginia. These are the good-paying jobs politicians always talk about but don’t understand how to create. These are the pipefitters, the welders, the industrial equipment operators who built our great nation, but who have been left behind. These jobs require the skills and experience that my organization is proud to represent.
The pipeline also offers renewed hope that we can revitalize Virginia’s manufacturing economy. Our region’s natural gas pipeline system is operating at full capacity, which severely limits our access to this important fuel. That significantly hinders our ability to attract new industries to Virginia and the jobs they bring with them.
By providing a new, direct link to low-cost supplies of natural gas from the nearby Appalachian region, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will serve as a magnet for new industry and a foundation for a new manufacturing economy.
The thousands of skilled and talented workers represented by the Virginia State Building & Construction Trades Council are eager to help build this new and vibrant economy, but we cannot do it without the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
The tremendous economic promise of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is the reason it has received bipartisan support from Gov. Terry McAuliffe as well as dozens of Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly. We commend Virginia’s political leadership for their steadfast support. They’re standing up for Virginians.
Although it’s largely ignored by the media, the pipeline is also supported by an unprecedented coalition of more than 200 businesses, labor unions and economic-development organizations across Virginia. Together, these businesses and organizations represent tens of thousands of Virginians who truly believe this pipeline is going to be an economic game-changer.
I am not an economist, but I do know that the livelihood of working Virginians and the economic future of our families depend on creating new opportunities. It’s time we start rebuilding America so our workers have the same opportunities as past generations. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline will do just that. We simply cannot let this opportunity pass us by.
Matthew Yonka is president of the Virginia State Building & Construction Trades Council, the Virginia affiliate of the AFL-CIO, a national trade union.
Read the full article and more from The Virginian-Pilot.