Good Jobs In Texas

Houston Local 716 Assistant Business Manager Paul Puente knows what it is like to not to have a voice on the job, having worked as a nonunion electrician for nearly a decade.

Says Puente:

Without a union, you don’t have the power to make change.

Houston Local 716 Assistant Business Manager Paul Puente, with
wife Janie, fights for working families from the jobsite to Capitol Hill.

And as an organizer for the local, he learned that that many issues that affect IBEW members – job creation, prevailing wage, health care and labor law – can’t be changed at the worksite alone.

That is why he is helping to mobilize members throughout Texas to support pro-working family candidates.

We need to make sure workers express their voice in Austin and in Washington, D.C. as well as on the jobsite.

One of the hottest races in Texas this year is the gubernatorial contest between Houston Mayor Bill White (D) and incumbent Rick Perry.

White is tied with Perry in public polls. Houston Local 66 Assistant Business Manager Mike Mosteit chalks up Perry’s precarious position to his failure to create good jobs statewide.

His record is terrible. He’s spending more time making crazy comments to the national press and helping out his cronies than investing in projects that would create decent work for Texans.

There are plenty of opportunities to promote high-wage job growth in Texas, Mosteit says:

West Texas has become a leader in wind power, but we need investment in renovating our power system so it can transmit that power to the large population centers in the east

But Perry, says Puente, who has run up a record state deficit, has promised nothing but budget cuts to items that will hurt working families the most: schools, unemployment insurance and infrastructure agencies.

The Associate Press reported that, while fashioning himself a fiscal conservative, Perry has spent more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars to maintain a $10,000-a-month luxury home while the governor’s mansion is under repair.

Says Puente:

We’re hurting and Perry’s spending our money on hot tubs and subscriptions to Food and Wine magazine.

Mosteit contrasts Perry’s record with White’s.

As mayor, Bill White focused on creating real jobs and investing in the city.

Despite weak job growth across the state, Houston created more jobs than 37 states combined under White’s tenure, Mosteit says.

And the IBEW partnered with White to help make sure those jobs were quality, good-paying by having the city to adopt a prevailing wage law and a requirement that city contractors provide health insurance to their employees.

Mosteit, who serves on the city council of La Porte, a Houston suburb, says labor is also getting out the vote for a slate of candidates from city council on up, including former AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Linda Chavez-Thompson who is running for lieutenant governor.

Says Chavez-Thompson on Perry’s and current Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s spotty jobs record:

[They] like to brag that while other states are hurting, Texas is creating jobs. But a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has brought ... some clarity to that. Texas, now, has the highest share of minimum-wage workers in the nation.

Says Mosteit:

I know from my own time on the council that elections matter. If we want to create good jobs, an environment friendly to workers’ rights and a fair economic system, we have to get involved and support those candidates who will support us.