Labor & Employment Law

Stimulus Money Creates Job, Rebuilds Rail Cars

By Mike Hall

In Delaware, 50 union workers, including 20 Electrical Workers (IBEW) members, are at work and paying their bills and mortgages, thanks to economic recovery money that is also saving Amtrak millions of dollars in new equipment.

Those jobs are part of as many as 3.3 million jobs that President Obama?s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act saved or created since it was signed into law in February 2009. In the three months prior to passage of the legislation, the nation had lost 2.2 million jobs?more than 8 million jobs disappeared during the Bush administration.

The Delaware workers are converting old and abandoned dining cars into money making Amtrak passenger cars. IBEW member Tom Rapposelli, standing in one of the cars being refurbished, says in this IBEW video:

This car would have probably been totaled and left outside to rot. And with that stimulus money we were able to put it back together with new people being hired.

For Amtrak, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded project has dramatically cut costs for new cars. Fixing up one of the old cars cost just one-third of buying a new one.

Bill Bohne, IBEW?s railroad director, says the Amtrak project:

Is a great example of how the stimulus money is putting Americans back to work. It?s saving tax dollars in the long run and creating new jobs right now.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 05, 2010 (boomark / email).