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President Biden’s candidate for Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has vowed that the Biden administration will ensure unionized workers who have lost their jobs due to the Keystone XL pipeline blockage get new jobs.
Sen. Ted Cruz, of R-Texas, raised the issue Tuesday during Raimondo’s confirmation hearing.
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“Last week, President Biden signed an executive order canceling the Keystone pipeline, destroying 11,000 jobs, including 8,000 union jobs. If you were confirmed as secretary of commerce, what would you say to those 11,000 construction workers whose jobs were destroyed by the stroke of the pen? “Cruz asked.
“I would say, we’ll put you to work,” Raimondo replied. “I would say that climate change is a threat to all of us, and we’ll make sure you have jobs, that you have the skills you need to have a job, and for that matter, as we respond to needs of climate change, there will be many jobs created, good paying jobs, unionized jobs. And if I were to be a secretary of commerce, I would fight every day so that every American had a decent job and a chance to compete. “
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Cruz had already debated the question during the confirmation hearing of the candidate of the secretary of transport Pete Buttigieg. After Senator Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, asked about the thousands of jobs that would be lost by stopping work on the pipeline, Buttigieg was optimistic that those losses will be offset by new jobs created as the new administration is heading towards climate-conscious goals. .
Cruz asked Buttigieg what this really means.
“So for these workers the answer is someone else will get a job?” He asked.
Buttigieg replied that he and the administration “are very anxious to see these workers continue in well-paying union jobs, even though they may be different.”
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Neal Crabtree, a member of Pipeline Local 798, was among the first to be laid off as a result of the order.
“Just like the rest of the country, COVID has hurt us. We’ve had a lot of canceled projects,” Crabtree, a 46-year-old welder from Arkansas, told Fox News. “We have guys who haven’t worked for months, and in some cases years, and having a project of this magnitude canceled is going to hurt a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of communities.”
Teny Sahakian of Fox News contributed to this report.
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