The Biden-Harris administration delivered more than $16 billion to Pennsylvania under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — money that will bring an influx of union jobs to the state for many years to come.
It hasn’t moved the needle much in the 2024 campaign.
The many union voters that make up the state’s electorate are not connecting the rush of federal money with the robust demand for skilled labor to the Biden-Harris agenda, as local labor leaders across Pennsylvania — from bellwether districts to conservative strongholds — told NOTUS.
“It’s the economy, and it will be, as long as they’re paying $3.89 a gallon when gasoline was $2.25 back in 2021, even though it was COVID and no one was traveling anywhere,” said James Nuber, the business manager at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 56 in Erie.
Erie is one of a handful of counties in the nation that voted for Barack Obama, then Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. One factor in that swing was the union vote, where Nuber said rank-and-file members “lost their faith in Trump and went back to voting Democrat.”
“But things changed when the economy tanked,” he said.
Local leaders across Pennsylvania said union members aren’t attributing the current or upcoming infrastructure projects that are providing jobs to Biden or Kamala Harris. Erie received $182 million from the Department of Energy for a plastics recycling plant that would convert the byproduct to a fuel source for making steel. But the project is still in the works, with a plan to break ground in the spring of 2025, Nuber said.
“Even when it does get built, I would still say there will be naysayers,” he said.
Pennsylvania is a microcosm of the tricky politics of infrastructure in the 21st century. Politicians like Harris and Biden have campaigned on big public works packages; Democrats have said they believe the infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act will pay political dividends in November and be a capstone on a political legacy. But these ambitions have run into the buzz saw of long project timelines, labor shortages, permitting problems, locals angry about new construction or disruptions during large projects and the larger issue of decades of underinvestment in American infrastructure at all levels of government.
NOTUS analyzed Bipartisan Infrastructure Law data released by the Biden administration and filed state public records requests as part of an ongoing effort to understand the law’s impact on both American life and the 2024 election. We found that Pennsylvania, like so many other parts of America, is seeing long construction timelines on ambitious projects and an overreliance on contractors and private interests to execute the promise of the law.
The state also has unique challenges that may be blunting the impact of the law: It’s an older state full of infrastructure built in past centuries that’s becoming unusable.
The state’s two major cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, have transit agencies in the midst of a funding battle with the state legislature and threatening massive service cuts if they don’t get more funds from the state. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority warned that it may have to increase fares and cut service if it doesn’t get a massive bailout from the state — something a spokesperson for the agency called a “death spiral” for a transit agency. Due to its mountainous geography, the state also has a huge number of bridges — and many of them are deficient and need significant repairs, a project that has consumed a lot of state resources in recent years.
“Pennsylvania is, relatively speaking, one of the slower growing states in the country. They also have an infrastructure built from prior decades because it’s older and also built to standards of its day. Maintenance is their biggest priority,” said Adie Tomer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert in infrastructure policy and urban economics.
“That’s the right assessment in a state like Pennsylvania. In other words, let’s fix it first. And then we can talk about capacity later. And that’s a real change from generations past,” said Tomer.
With some exceptions like a proposed Scranton to New York City passenger train that this week received nearly $9 million in grants from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, there’s very little in the way of ambitious new transportation projects on tap in Pennsylvania — in part because the state has long struggled to maintain what’s already built.
Philadelphia International Airport will get new restrooms by 2028 — a project that’s already been ongoing since 2012 before it received an influx of money to help speed it along from the infrastructure law. Pittsburgh’s light rail will get some station upgrades, and Philadelphia’s subway will get a fleet of new railcars by 2031. Bridges across the state will be repaired or replaced, highways resurfaced and older gas-powered buses will be replaced with modern electric ones.
Philadelphia is aiming to complete a project, partially funded by the infrastructure law, to reconfigure a dangerous travel corridor by 2040. SEPTA is relying on contractors to figure out what kind of railcars they want to purchase from other contractors, who will then build them.
Pennsylvania’s emphasis on maintaining what’s there rather than building anew may explain why some voters aren’t moved by the billions pouring into the state. But all these projects mean steady union work — and yet labor leaders don’t see their members giving Democrats credit either.
Instead everything from inflation to immigration to culture war issues remain on the forefront of these voters’ minds.
Unlike in Erie, where projects for Local 56 are just getting started, union work is booming across the state in the Lehigh Valley. Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773 in Allentown, said that road and bridge repairs, lead pipe replacement and particularly the Turnpike replacement and widening all provide jobs to his members.
“We didn’t have any funding to get them started, they weren’t happening, and now all of a sudden, we are, and it’s a product of the Infrastructure Act,” Hower said.
“I just don’t understand how people aren’t connecting it,” he added. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Nuber is doing what he can to help connect the dots between the union jobs and the Biden-Harris administration, but most people have made up their minds based on the economy.
“I get more reaction when I talk to a brick wall,” he said.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said that the disconnect between the jobs being created and Biden is “not concerning, but it is challenging.”
“We represent people who go to work every day, they come home, some of them watch the wrong news channel,” Redmond said on a Democratic National Committee union press call last week.
“There’s a genuine lack of understanding in how these bills came into place and who championed these bills,” he said.
At the state level, the Harris campaign has emphasized its support for unions. Outside groups have run ads touting Harris’ tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, but the message is focused on clean energy, including new jobs.
UAW leader Shawn Fain stumped through Pennsylvania earlier this month alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sen. Bernie Sanders was in Erie last weekend, where he launched a canvass at the United Steelworkers Hall alongside Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Angela Ferritto. Biden’s last visit to Pennsylvania was with the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Pittsburgh. The last time Harris explicitly mentioned unions while in Pennsylvania was at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh at the end of September.
The infrastructure law’s biggest champions point to the many benefits Pennsylvania gets under it — from new rail service from Scranton to New York City to better service on the train that connects Philadelphia with Boston, Washington and New York City to a big influx of money for rural broadband all over the state.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside $250 million for a program that would identify and plug abandoned oil wells, for example, and Pennsylvania, with its legacy of oil and gas drilling, stands to reap the environmental benefits.
“They’re responsible for a lot of climate change we’re feeling today with the heat and other things. That’s really important,” said Amanda Leland, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund.
The challenge for Harris is getting voters — even those more directly impacted — to recognize the changes.
“I would hope that they would see, you know, these projects that were just not getting started,” Hower said. “I just look around, there’s tons of construction projects going on right now that are going to benefit our people.”
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Byron Tau is a reporter at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.