Vice Presidential Pool Reports of June 21, 2021

VP travel pool report #1 - Harris arrives at PIT

Good morning from Pittsburgh. My name is Lauren Rosenblatt, I'm a reporter with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and will be your pool reporter for today.

It's about 82 degrees in Corapolis, Pa., about 12 miles from the city of Pittsburgh.

Air Force 2 touched down at 11:02. Kamala Harris stepped off at 11:19. She hugged attorney general Josh Shapiro and Sen Bob Casey, the first two in line as she stepped off the plane, before switching to hand shakes for the rest of the group there to greet her.

That group includes:
Attorney General Josh Shapiro
Senator Bob Casey
Congressman Conor Lamb
County executive Rich Fitzgerald
Mayor Bill Peduto
Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis
Col. Ray Hayland, 171st Air Refueling Wing Commander

We are headed to the Brookline Memorial Recreation Center to talk child tax credit and visit with a group of students. Pool left at 11:25 am.

Vp travel pool report #2 - Harris visits with campers

We reached the Brookline Recreation Center at 11:54 a.m. Residents sat outside on their porches or stood on the sidewalk with cameras to film the motorcade passing.

The pair is scheduled to talk to a group of 16 children and three teachers. The group is decorating a "design your own superhero mask," seated at a U-shaped set of tables.

The classroom has three posters, cut from white construction paper in the shape of bubbles or clouds reading "Welcome VP Harris."

The kids are part of the Citicamp program, which is provided by the Pittsburgh Department of Parks and Recreation. Camp is free and is for children aged 7-12. They are in week 2 or the 4-week program, according to camp officials.

Ms. Harris came in the room at 12:01 and complemented the children on their artwork. "Totally in the lines," she told one camper. She complemented another on the hearts they had drawn on their superhero.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh had joined her.

"I grew up with just the best teachers and neighbors," Ms. Harris told the kids. "If you look closely at people like your teachers, if you look really closely, you'll see they're wearing a cape...Because they're superheroes."

Vp travel pool report #3 - local leaders welcome Harris, Walsh

County executive Rich Fitzgerald spoke first. He thanked the Biden administration for their work in rolling out the Covid-19 vaccines and the signing into law of the American Rescue Plan, the covid relief bill that included the expanded child tax credits.

Mayor Bill Peduto spoke next, he was met with a lot of crowd applause. "Listen, this is a wonderful day...a historic day to be able to say 'welcome to Pittsburgh madame Vice President.'"

"There's only so much you can do at the local level...you can only help a child so much...you need that critical partner to invest in children," Mr. Peduto said, adding that he wanted to see the extended child tax credits in place for the next 5 years.

Sen Bob Casey agreed with that sentiment: "Those are one-year provisions...we need to expand the child tax credit for 5 more years."

More tk from Walsh and Harris.

Vp travel pool report 4 - Harris and Walsh tax credit comments

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh spoke about the need to support the "cares economy." The American Rescue Plan will send $39 billion to states to meet childcare needs, he said. The proposed American Jobs plan would invest even more.

He highlighted a few parts of the Rescue plan that would help families, including universal pre-kindergarten, the right to organize for home health workers and 12 weeks of paid family leave for every working person.

"Caregiving is the work that stands up the rest of the economy," he said. "Caregiving is so important, it's the foundation."

"American Rescue Plan is a strong down payment."

Ross Chapman, the director for the Department of Parks and Rec for the city of Pittsburgh introduced Harris.

Harris started by talking about the "young leaders" she had met earlier at the Rec center.

"Our responsibility, our duty [is] to all our community's children...When you look in their eyes, you can see our future is bright.

"They have not yet heard...there are any limitations on who they are and who they could be."

She told the crowd that, when discussing how best to help American's children, it's important to take care of the children in the context of the family that is raising them. The AmericanRescue Plan would benefit 140,000 families in Pennsylvania, she said.

The administration is working now to make sure people know about the expanded tax credit that is available for 2021. The expansion from $2,000 to $3,000 (or $3,600 for children under the age of 6) will make a big difference for families, she said. "That could cover a month of rent, a few months of groceries, an entire year of groceries."

She also highlighted the fact that families will get the credit every month - rather than as a lump sum once a year - to help them pay bills as they come.

She ended her talk with a story about a recent visit to a child care center. There she met a 5 year old girl who acted as the "ambassador" for the class and introduced Harris to each student by name. Harris then told the girl you can be anything you want to be and the girl replied: "I want to be everything."

Quick travel update

The pool arrived at international brotherhood of electrical workers local 5 in South Side at 1:15 pm

Pool report #5 - pittsburgh leaders intro to labor round table

Pittsburgh leaders started introductory remarks for a labor round table at 2:03 p.m.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Sen Bob Casey and rep Conor Lamb shared remarks.

Lamb focused on the PRO act and said they would make sure that workers get a fair share of the wealth in the future. Casey said we have a chance to make "transformational" investments with the infrastructure plan but we had to make sure the "assault on workers...the attacks on the the right to organize, all that becomes history."

"We have a lot of work to do to lift up workers who are going to be doing the work when those infrastructure dollars are spent," Casey said.

Shapiro noted that the round table was taking place at IBEW, a place that is training "the workers of tomorrow."

Harris and Walsh have not yet arrived.

Vp travel pool report 6 - Harris, Walsh at labor round table

Harris and Walsh arrived at the round table at 2:19 p.m.

Walsh opened the discussion by talking about his own childhood — both his parents are immigrants from Ireland, he said, his father and uncle joined the local labor union where he grew up outside of Boston and discussions about unemployment and keeping workers safe on the job were common in the family.

Walsh later joined the union as well. "That union gave my family everything," he said, including a pension when his father retired and health care benefits to cover expenses from cancer he had as a child.

The Pro Act, the American Families and American Jobs plan and the fight for $15 are all "intertwined" in the labor movement, he said.

Harris spoke next, starting by reminding people to thank unions for things like a five day work week, weekends and paid leave. She acknowledged there was still work to be done on the last one.

The Biden administration will " probably be the most pro-Union" admin, she said. "There is no issue we can take on that is too small or too big."

The admin is committed to reinforcing the right to collective bargaining and to breaking down barriers that are preventing workers from organizing, Harris said.

She added her own definition of infrastructure: "whatever you need to get where you need to go." If you need someone to watch your child so you can go to work, then child care counts as infrastructure, she said.

"If we are going to be strong as an economy, we have to support our workers and make sure they are strong," Harris said.

Walsh and Harris then started asking questions of the local labor leaders, including ideas on how to appeal to a new audience of members, complications and obstacles that are preventing workers from organizing and the reasons people are reluctant to organize.

Jennifer Chow, an organizer with CWA, told her own story of joining the effort to unionize just a few weeks after starting her new job. She said she did not tell her bosses she was attending the panel for fear of retaliation and she did not tell her coworkers because they were often afraid to publicly support to union efforts.

"People are afraid to go public...we're afraid our leadership is going to come at us," Chow said.

Harris asked Chow why she chose to join the union. Chow responded,with tears she was struggling to control, that she wanted to join after hearing a coworker made $40,000 more because, she believed, he worked in San Francisco and was a man. She said she felt as if she was being treated as less than than some of her coworkers.

The pool left the round table as Walsh and Harris continued to ask participants questions.

Vp travel pool report - Harris meets with tech workers who unionized

Weather caused a change of plans in Pittsburgh. Harris stayed at IBEW longer than originally intended.

There she met with three contractors for Google who recently formed a tech union, one of the first groups of white-collar tech workers to to vote for a union in the country.

The contractors were named:
Wynne Lanros
Amanda Parks
Rachel Davis

Contract workers at Google's Pittsburgh office voted to unionize in September 2019.

About 80 tech workers who are employed by Google contractor HCL Technologies Ltd. voted in favor of representation by the United Steelworkers. HCL employees said at the time that they worked algonside Google employees at lower pay rates and with fewer benefits.

The National Labor board issued a complaint against HCL in October 2020, alleging that the company violated employees rights to be free of intimidation and coercion.

Harris and Walsh wanted to meet to stand in solidarity with the contractors.

The pool left for the airport around 4:10 p.m.

vp travel pool report 8 - boards Air Force 2

Harris boarded Air Force 2 at 4:42 p.m. after her last stop visiting with tech contractors from Google. She is about 20 minutes ahead of schedule.