Related Articles

Highway Bill Provides Boost to America's
Roads and Rails

March 23, 2012

The Senate, in rare act of bipartisanship, passed a $109 billion highway bill March 14, which both industry and union leaders are applauding as a crucial step toward renovating America’s crumbling transportation infrastructure.

The bill would inject billions into federal highway and rail construction projects to improve our country’s surface transportation system.

Supporters said it would preserve almost 2 million jobs and create another 1 million over the next few years.

Says IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill:

We can’t remain a world class economy with a transportation infrastructure stuck in the 1950s. Transportation and jobs shouldn’t be partisan issues.

In addition to putting needed investments into our aged highway and rail systems, the legislation contains three notable items of interest to IBEW members:

• Strengthens Buy America requirements to ensure that domestic manufacturing receive precedence
• Nixes the tax loophole known as the Reverse Morris Trust, which allowed Verizon to sell off chunks of its business without paying taxes, while heaping large debt on small companies
• Extends section 420 of the Internal Revenue Code, which allows companies with overfunded pensions to use a portion of it to pay for retiree healthcare. This is particularly important for the thousands of former Western Electric Co. employees whose retirement benefits are maintained by the telecommunication manufacturer’s successor company, Alcatel-Lucent.

Although it received broad support in the Senate from both parties, House Republicans say they are unlikely to pass a bill until sometime in April. If no action is taken by March 31, Congress will have to pass a temporary extension of transportation funding to prevent all federal highway and rail construction projects from coming to a halt.

Says Hill:

The House leadership can’t continue to procrastinate on an issue that is of such vital importance to our economy. We are working to not only make sure a highway bill is passed, but that the strong pro-worker, pro-jobs provisions in the Senate version aren’t stripped out.