Gina Raimondo, President Biden’s nominee as secretary of trade, has promised that the Biden government will ensure that union workers who lose jobs due to the Keystone XL pipeline blockage will get new jobs.
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, raised the issue Tuesday during the Raimondo confirmation hearing.
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“Last week, President Biden signed an executive order canceling the Keystone pipeline and destroying 11,000 jobs, including 8,000 unions. If you were confirmed as trade secretary, what would you say to the 11,000 construction workers whose jobs was destroyed by the stroke of a pen? ‘Cruz asked.
“I would say we’ll get you to work,” Raimondo replied. ‘I would say that climate change is a threat to all of us, and that we will make sure you have a job, that you have the skills you need to have a job, and by the way if we meet the needs of climate change . , many jobs will be created, well-paid jobs, unions. And if I were the trade secretary, I would fight every day for every American to have a decent paying job and a chance to compete. ‘
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Cruz had earlier discussed the issue during the confirmation hearing for Pete Buttigieg, nominated for transportation secretary. After asking Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, about the thousands of jobs that would be lost if jobs were stopped at the pipeline, Buttigieg was optimistic that these losses would be offset by new positions created as the new government moved to climate-conscious goals .
Cruz presses Buttigieg on what it actually means.
“So for the workers, the answer is that someone else will get a job?” he asked.
Buttigieg replied that he and the administration “are very keen to see that the workers still employ well-paid unions, even if they are different.”
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Neal Crabtree, a member of Pipeliners Local Union 798, was one of the first to be fired after the order.
“Like in the rest of the country, COVID hurt us a lot. We canceled a lot of projects,” Crabtree, a 46-year-old welder from Arkansas, told Fox News. “We have guys who have not been working for months, and in some cases years, and to have a project of this magnitude canceled, it is going to hurt a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of communities.”
Fox News’ Teny Sahakian contributed to this report.