SHELBY – U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown discussed steel, the skill gap and the succession of the next president at ArcelorMittal in Shelby on Tuesday.
Brown visited the local steel and mining company to discuss “Buy America,” a provision he wrote that would require American-made steel and iron be used for certain taxpayer-funded construction projects, such as recent water infrastructure legislation. Brown is also co-chair of the Senate Steel Caucus.
When the provision was left out of the final water infrastructure bill, Brown along with Sen. Rob Portman and other colleagues drafted a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan and other leaders in the House and Senate demanding they restore the “Buy America” provision.
“Congress just passed a bill to expand water and sewer projects, and I wrote language in the Senate bill to require ‘Buy America’ – for iron and steel in any of these projects, it’s got to be made in the U.S.,” Brown explained. “Even the suit I wear is made by union workers in Cleveland, Ohio, so I really believe this stuff.”
As the largest employer in the city of Shelby, ArcelorMittal employees know better than anyone the importance of buying American steel and iron. In 2014, the city of Shelby entered into an agreement with ArcelorMittal Tubular Products USA, LLC for a $30 million expansion of its welded tube facility.
Many workers on Tuesday expressed concern about losing industry jobs as technology becomes more the norm. Dick Clady, an electrician only eight days away from retirement, said he worried that automation would cut into the number of jobs in Shelby.
“I see automation in the future as really cutting out a lot of jobs,” Clady said. “A lot of the skills I had 30 years ago are worthless today because of technology changes. There’s no way I want to start again.”
Other workers touched on the difficulty in finding trained employees. Employee CD Derrenberger said the biggest problem is finding workers skilled in trades, then finding the resources to train said workers.
“In Cleveland they had a group of small businesses like this during a seminar,” Derrenberger said. “They said why don’t you train them, and part of it is we don’t want to do that because they go to other companies. Well then how about paying them more money, they say that will hurt our bottom line.”
In order to address the skills gap, Brown suggested that companies must take more responsibility for their workforce by paying better wages and providing better training. He noted ArcelorMittal is one example of a company that does its own apprentice work.
“It used to be that companies would train their own workers, now companies expect government and taxpayers to do it. That’s a bit of a problem,” Brown said. “They’ll all say that if they train their workers, they’ll all go somewhere else. But if all companies start training, then that’s not an issue. They’ve got to take responsibility; taxpayers have an obligation to fund our public schools and trade schools, but companies have more of an obligation here, too.”
Brown’s “Buy America” language was included in the Senate version of the infrastructure bill, then Speaker Ryan removed the language. Brown believes that both Ryan and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are beholden to foreign steel companies and companies that outsource jobs.
“I tweeted the president-elect, who I at this point have not yet met, and asked him to intervene, which he didn’t do,” Brown said. “I’m hopeful that starting the new year when he is president, we get ‘Buy America’ in everything we do.”
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in January, Brown noted Trump promised during his campaign to create a trillion-dollar infrastructure. However, Brown was concerned with the manner Trump claimed to create such infrastructure.
“The problem is he wants to do a lot of it through tax breaks for big companies, then privatize a lot of this,” Brown said. “There are three things I want to make sure happens – that we fund it and don’t just add it to the debt, that we need to make sure the jobs are prevailing wage, meaning union jobs that pay decent wages, and that we need ‘Buy America’ provisions in all of it.”
In April, Brown called on the administration to bring a World Trade Organization (WTO) case against China in an effort to address steel overcapacity, which has hurt the domestic steel industry. He criticized Trump for the president-elect’s own business relationships with China.
“In too many cases, and frankly this will sound critical of Trump, but Trump outsourced his own construction to China on iron and steel,” Brown said. “I hope that he means it when he said in the campaign he’s going to do it with American iron and steel for all of the federal and state government projects.
“I want to stand up to China on a lot of stuff in the economy, but you don’t want to antagonize them beyond what’s in our national interest,” Brown continued. “Presidents, once they’re in office, have to be careful about what they say.”
