How Amazon Crushes Unions

In a secret settlement in Virginia, Amazon swore off threatening and intimidating workers. As the company confronts increased labor unrest, its tactics are under scrutiny.

 

Amazon’s warehouse in Chester, Va., where a union effort tried to organize about 30 facilities technicians in 2014 and 2015.Credit...Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

By David Streitfeld

NYT
March 16, 2021

RICHMOND, Va. — Five years ago, Amazon was compelled to post a “notice to employees” on the break-room walls of a warehouse in east-central Virginia.

The notice was printed simply, in just two colors, and crammed with words. But for any worker who bothered to look closely, it was a remarkable declaration. Amazon listed 22 forms of behavior it said it would disavow, each beginning in capital letters: “WE WILL NOT.”

“We will not threaten you with the loss of your job” if you are a union supporter, Amazon wrote, according to a photo of the notice reviewed by The New York Times. “We will not interrogate you” about the union or “engage in surveillance of you” while you participate in union activities. “We will not threaten you with unspecified reprisals” because you are a union supporter. We will not threaten to “get” union supporters.

Amazon posted the list after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accused it of doing those very things during a two-year-long push to unionize 30 facilities technicians at the warehouse in Chester, just south of Richmond. While Amazon did not admit to violations of labor laws, the company promised in a settlement with federal regulators to tell workers that it would rigorously obey the rules in the future.

The employee notice and failed union effort, which have not previously been reported, are suddenly relevant as Amazon confronts increasing labor unrest in the United States. Over two decades, as the internet retailer mushroomed from a virtual bookstore into a $1.5 trillion behemoth, it forcefully — and successfully — resisted employee efforts to organize. Some workers in recent years agitated for change in Staten Island, Chicago, Sacramento and Minnesota, but the impact was negligible.

Bill Hough Jr., a machinist at the Chester warehouse who led the union drive. Amazon fired him in 2016.Credit...Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

In an employee notice, Amazon listed behavior it said it would disavow.


The arrival of the coronavirus last year changed that. It turned Amazon into an essential resource for millions stuck at home and redefined the company’s relationship with its warehouse workers. Like many service industry employees, they were vulnerable to the virus. As society locked down, they were also less able to simply move on if they had issues with the job.

Now Amazon faces a union vote at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. — the largest and most viable U.S. labor challenge in its history. Nearly 6,000 workers have until March 29 to decide whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. A labor victory could energize workers in other U.S. communities, where Amazon has more than 800 warehouses employing more than 500,000 people.

“This is happening in the toughest state, with the toughest company, at the toughest moment,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “If the union can prevail given those three facts, it will send a message that Amazon is organizable everywhere.”

Even if the union does not prevail, “the history of unions is always about failing forward,” she said. “Workers trying, workers losing, workers trying again.”

The effort in Chester, which The Times reconstructed with documents from regulators and the machinists’ union, as well as interviews with former facilities technicians at the warehouse and union officials, offers one of the fullest pictures of what encourages Amazon workers to open the door to a union — and what techniques the company uses to slam the door and nail it shut.

The employee notice was a hollow victory for workers. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that negotiated the settlement with Amazon, has no power to impose monetary penalties. Its enforcement remedies are few and weak, which means its ability to restrain anti-union employers from breaking the law is limited. The settlement was not publicized, so there were not even any public relations benefits.

Amazon was the real winner. There have been no further attempts at a union in Chester.

The tactics that Amazon used in Chester are surfacing elsewhere. The retail workers union said Amazon was trying to surveil employees in Bessemer and even changed a traffic signal to prevent organizers from approaching warehouse workers as they left the site. Last month, the New York attorney general said in a lawsuit that Amazon had retaliated against employees who tried to protest its pandemic safety measures as inadequate.

Amazon declined to say whether it had complied with labor laws during the union drive in Chester in 2014 and 2015. In a statement, it said it was “compliant with the National Labor Relations Act in 2016” when it issued the employee notice, and “we continue to be compliant today.” It added in a different statement that it didn’t believe the union push in Alabama “represents the majority of our employees’ views.”

The labor board declined to comment.

The Chester settlement notice mentions one worker by name: Bill Hough Jr., a machinist who led the union drive. The notice said Amazon had issued a warning to Mr. Hough that he was on the verge of being fired. Amazon said it would rescind the warning.

Six months later, in August 2016, Amazon fired him anyway.

Mr. Hough (pronounced Huff) was in a hospital having knee surgery when Amazon called and said he had used up his medical leave. Since he couldn’t do his job, he said he was told, this was the end of the line.

“There was no mercy, even after what they had done to me,” Mr. Hough, now 56, said. “That’s Amazon. If you can’t give 110 percent, you’re done.”

Amazon declined to comment on Mr. Hough.

No Constraints

A truck at the warehouse in Chester. Amazon has been fending off attempts to unionize since at least 1999. Credit...Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

Amazon was founded on notions of speed, efficiency and hard work — lots of hard work. Placing his first help wanted ad in 1994, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, said he wanted engineers who could do their job “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible.”

Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.”

In 1999, the reps, who numbered about 400, were targeted by a grass-roots group affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. Amazon mounted an all-out defense.

If workers became anything less than docile, managers were told, it was a sign there could be union activity. Tipoffs included “hushed conversations” and “small group huddles breaking up in silence on the approach of the supervisor,” as well as increased complaints, growing aggressiveness and dawdling in the bathroom.

Amazon was in sync with the larger culture. Unions were considered relics of the industrial past. Disruption was a virtue.

“Twenty years ago, if you asked whether the government or workers should be able to put any constraints on companies, the answer always was ‘No constraints,’” said Marcus Courtney, a labor organizer on the 1999 Amazon campaign. “If companies wanted to push people 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, hats off to them.”

When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Amazon lost some of its glow. For a time, its very existence was in question.

This caused problems for the activists as well. The company reorganized and closed the customer service center, though Amazon said there was no connection with the union drive. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Prewitt Organizing Fund, an independent group, made no inroads organizing Amazon’s 5,000 warehouse workers.

A decade later, in 2011, came a low point in Amazon’s labor history. The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa., revealed that Amazon was hiring paramedics and ambulances during summer heat waves at a local warehouse. Workers who collapsed were removed with stretchers and wheelchairs and taken to hospitals.

Amazon installed air conditioning but otherwise was undaunted. After the Great Recession in 2008, there was no lack of demand for its jobs — and no united protest about working conditions. In Europe, where unions are stronger, there were sporadic strikes. In the United States, isolated warehouse walkouts drew no more than a handful of workers.

The Machinist

Mr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep conveyor belts running.Credit...Ruth Fremson for The New York Times


Mr. Hough worked as an industrial machinist at a Reynolds aluminum mill in Richmond for 24 years. He once saw a worker lose four fingers when a steel roller fell unexpectedly. Incidents like that made a deep impression on him: Never approach equipment casually.

Reynolds closed the plant in the Great Recession, when Mr. Hough was in his mid-40s. Being in the machinists guild cushioned the blow, but he needed another job. After a long spell of unemployment, he joined Amazon in 2013.

The Chester warehouse, the size of several aircraft carriers, had opened a year earlier, part of Amazon’s multibillion-dollar push to put fulfillment centers everywhere. Mr. Hough worked on the conveyor belts bringing in the goods.

At first, he received generally good marks. “He has a great attitude and does not participate in negative comments or situations,” Amazon said in a March 2014 performance review. “He gets along with all the other technicians.”

But Mr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep the belts running. Amazon prided itself on getting purchases to customers quickly, and when conveyor belts were down that mission was in jeopardy. He once protested restarting a belt while he was still working on it.

“Quit your bitching,” Mr. Hough said his manager, Bryon Frye, had told him, twice.

“That sent me down the wrong road,” Mr. Hough said.

Bryon Frye’s tweet about Amazon union campaigns.Credit...Twitter

Mr. Frye, who declined to comment, no longer works for Amazon. On Twitter last month, he responded to a news story that said Amazon was hiring former F.B.I. agents to deal with worker activism, counterfeiting and antitrust issues.

“This doesn’t shock me,” he wrote. “They do some wild things.”

The Union Drive


Members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union distributed literature outside the Alabama warehouse where Amazon workers are voting on whether to join the union.Credit...Bob Miller for The New York Times


In 2014, Mr. Hough and five other technicians approached the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A unionization effort was already taking place with the technicians at an Amazon warehouse in Middletown, Del. If either succeeded, it would be the first for Amazon.

The elections for a union would be conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The first step was to measure interest. At least 18 of the 30 technicians in Chester returned cards indicating their willingness to be represented by the union.

“It was not too difficult to sign people up,” said Russell Wade, a union organizer there. “But once the word leaked out to Amazon, they put the afterburners on, as employers do. Then the workers started losing interest. Amazon spent oodles of money to scare the hell out of employees.”

The board scheduled an election for March 4, 2015. A simple majority of votes cast would establish union representation.

Amazon brought in an Employee Resource Center team — basically, its human resources department — to reverse any momentum. A former technician at the warehouse, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, said the reps on the team followed workers around, pretending to be friendly but only seeking to know their position on the union drive.

If safety was the biggest issue for the technicians, there were also concerns over pay equity — machinists said they were paid different amounts for doing the same job — and about their lack of control over their fate. Part of Mr. Hough’s pitch was that a union would make management less arbitrary.

“One guy, all I remember is his name was Bob,” he said. “They paged Bob to the control room, and the next thing I saw was Bob coming down the steps. He had taken off his work vest. I said, ‘Bob, where are you going?’ He said, ‘They terminated me.’ I didn’t ask why. That’s the way it was.”

Several technicians said they recalled being told at a meeting, “You vote for a union, every one of you will be looking for a job tomorrow.” At another, the most outspoken union supporters were described as “a cancer and a disease to Amazon and the facility,” according to Mr. Hough and a union memo. (In a filing to the labor board, Amazon said it had investigated the incident and “concluded that it could not be substantiated.”)

Mr. Hough, a cancer survivor, said the reference had offended him. He declined to attend another meeting run by that manager. He said he had known in any case what she was going to say: that the union was canceling the election because it thought it would lose. Amazon had triumphed.

On March 30, 2015, Mr. Hough received a written warning from Mr. Frye, his manager.

“Your behavior has been called out by peers/leaders as having a negative impact,” it said. Included under “insubordination” was a refusal to attend the Amazon victory announcement. Another incident, Amazon said, could result in termination.

The machinists union filed a complaint with the labor board in July 2015 alleging unfair labor practices by Amazon, including surveilling, threatening and “informing employees that it would be futile to vote for union representation.” Mr. Hough spent eight hours that summer giving his testimony. While labor activists and unions generally consider the board to be heavily tilted in favor of employers, union officials said a formal protest would at least show Chester technicians that someone was fighting for them.

In early 2016, Amazon settled with the board. The main thrust of the two-page settlement was that Amazon would post an employee notice promising good behavior while admitting nothing.

Wilma Liebman, a member of the labor board from 1997 to 2011, examined the employee notice at the request of The Times. “What is unusual to my eye is how extensive Amazon’s pledges were, and how specific,” she said. “While the company did not have to admit guilt, this list offers a picture of what likely was going on.”

Amazon was required to post the notice “in all places where notices to employees are customarily posted” in Chester for 60 days, the labor board said.

From the machinists union’s point of view, it wasn’t much of a punishment.

“This posting was basically a slap on the wrist for the violations that Amazon committed, which included lies, coercion, threats and intimidation,” said Vinny Addeo, the union’s director of organizing.

Another reason for filing an unfair labor practices claim was that the union hoped to restart its efforts with a potentially chastened company. But most of the employees who supported the Chester drive quit.

“They were intimidated,” Mr. Wade, the union organizer, said.

Mr. Hough was beset by ill health during his years at Amazon. Radiation treatment for his cancer prompted several strokes. His wife, Susan, had health problems, too. Mr. Hough said he wondered how much the unionization struggle contributed to their problems. He added that he didn’t know whom to trust.

After leaving Amazon, Mr. Hough began driving trucks, at first long haul and later a dump truck. It paid less, but he said he was at peace.
Maximum Green Times

Nearly 6,000 workers in Bessemer have until March 29 to decide whether to join the union.Credit...Wes Frazer for The New York Times

When Amazon vanquished the 2014 union drive in Delaware, the retailer said it was a victory for “open lines of direct communication between managers and associates.”

One place Amazon developed that direct communication was in its warehouse bathrooms under what it called its “inSTALLments” program. The inSTALLments were informational sheets that offered, for instance, factoids about Mr. Bezos, the timing of meetings and random warnings, such as this one about unpaid time off: “If you go negative, your employment status will be reviewed for termination.”

Amazon’s “inSTALLments” program used postings in warehouse bathrooms to communicate with workers.Credit...The New York Times

As the union drive heated up in Bessemer, the direct communication naturally was about that. “Where will your dues go?” Amazon asked in one stall posting, which circulated on social media. Another proclaimed: “Unions can’t. We can.”

Amazon also set up a website to tell workers that they would have to skip dinner and school supplies to pay their union dues.

In December, a pro-union group discovered, Amazon asked county officials to increase “maximum green times” on the warehouse stoplight to clear the parking lot faster. This made it difficult for union canvassers to approach potential voters as they left work. Amazon declined to comment.

Last month, President Biden weighed in.

“There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda,” he said in a video that never mentioned Amazon but referred to “workers in Alabama” deciding whether to organize a union. “You know, every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice.”

Workers in Alabama – and all across America – are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. It’s a vitally important choice – one that should be made without intimidation or threats by employers.

Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. pic.twitter.com/2lzbyyii1g— President Biden (@POTUS) March 1, 2021

Owning 25 Hats

Mr. Hough, in an interview before the pandemic, said part of him wanted to forget what had happened at Amazon. Why dwell on defeat? He threw away all the papers from the union drive. He never saw the employee notice because he was recovering from a stroke.

But he has not forgiven the retailer.

“You’re only going to step on me one time,” he said, sitting in his home in the outskirts of Richmond.

Amazon’s customers just don’t know how miserable a job there can be, he suggested.

“I guarantee you, if their child had to work there, they’d think twice before purchasing things,” he said.

Ms. Hough, sitting next to him, had a bleaker view.

“The customers don’t care about unions. They don’t care about the workers. They just want their packages,” she said.

As if on cue, their son, Brody, came in. He was 20, an appliance technician. His mother told him there was a package for him on his bed. It was from Amazon, a fishing hat. It cost $25, Brody said, half the price on the manufacturer’s website.

“I order from Amazon anything I can find that is cheaper,” Brody said. That adds up to a lot of hats, about 25. “I’ve never worked for Amazon. I can’t hate them,” he said.

Ms. Hough looked at her husband. “If your own son doesn’t care,” she asked, not unkindly, “how are you going to get the American public to care?”

The pandemic helped change that, bringing safety issues at Amazon to the forefront. In a Feb. 16 suit against Amazon, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the company continued last year to track and discipline employees based on their productivity rates. That meant workers had limited time to protect themselves from the virus. The suit said Amazon retaliated against those who complained, sending a “chilling message” to all its workers. Amazon has denied the allegations.

Last week, regional Canadian authorities also ordered thousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Toronto to quarantine themselves, effectively closing the facility. Some 240 workers recently tested positive for the virus there, a government spokeswoman said, even as the rate of infection in the area fell. Amazon said it was appealing the decision.

Alabama is now the big test. Mr. Hough worries the union supporters will be crushed.

“They will fall to threats or think, ‘I won’t have a job, Amazon will replace me,’” he said by phone this month. “When a company can do things to you in secret, it’s real hard to withstand.”

Still, he added, “I’m hoping for the best. More power to them.”

Amazon and Workers

Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama

March 2, 2021

Amazon’s Great Labor Awakening

Feb. 18, 2021

Amazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely Place

Jan. 25, 2021

Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal

Nov. 27, 2020

David Streitfeld has written about technology and its effects for twenty years. In 2013, he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.   

The Battle To Unionize Amazon's Alabama Warehouse Started Right Here

Dave Jamieson
·Labor Reporter, HuffPost
Tue, March 16, 2021

Union organizers from the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union rally support as workers change shifts outside Amazon's fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, in March. (Photo: Bob Miller for HuffPost)

BESSEMER, Ala. ― The most closely watched union campaign in years began at the entrances to an Amazon warehouse here last October. Five months later, workers and organizers are still standing at the same posts day and night, determined not to let up until the ballots are counted at the end of March.

If the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union wins this fight to create the first union within Amazon’s U.S. workforce, the victory will have been seeded right here.

“Every gate is really important. It’s how you start organizing,” said José Aguilar, a union representative stationed at an entrance one day last week.


Aguilar, 48, was working the evening shift as the sun set and the temperature hung near 70 degrees ― the most pleasant weather he could ask for while standing on a sidewalk for a few hours. He held a union sign and waved as a worker leaving the parking lot pulled up to the traffic light, headed home. Aguilar’s colleagues stood at two other spots down the road.

He tried to explain why he’s stood at the entrances since the fall, sometimes for 10 consecutive days.

“If [workers] stop and have questions, we answer the questions,” Aguilar said. “If they come and we left, and they don’t see nobody, they’re gonna say, ‘They don’t care.’”

Union representative José Aguilar has stood at the warehouse entrances to talk to workers about the union since the fall, sometimes for 10 consecutive days. (Photo: Bob Miller for HuffPost)

Posting workers and organizers at the facility gates is a standard feature of industrial organizing campaigns, since unions don’t have access to worksites and don’t receive workers’ contact information until an election is scheduled. That means having to approach workers on public property right outside to make the case for why they should organize.

The entrance is where organizers amassed many of the 3,000 union cards workers signed. Signing a card indicates you authorize the union to represent you, but in reality it just means you’re game for a secret-ballot election. Once a union gathers cards from 30% of the expected bargaining unit, it can trigger an election through the National Labor Relations Board, though unions typically try to gather a greater share, to be more confident they have majority support.

The entrance is also where union organizers built trust and relationships with workers coming and going from the warehouse. And it’s where they endured frigid temperatures, the occasional cussing, and a lot of boredom between warehouse shift changes.

The RWDSU’s work at the gates has been unusually important for this campaign, given the size of the potential bargaining unit. With 5,800 workers, it appears to be the biggest union election under the National Labor Relations Board in two decades. Their conversations have also been a crucial source of intelligence on Amazon’s anti-union campaign unfolding inside the facility.

Mona Darby, 63, said she has spent so much time interacting with workers at the entrances that she knows which ones would make good union reps if the RWDSU wins. She said some workers will specifically ask to see “Ms. Mona” on their way out.

“You remember the cars. You remember the faces,” said Darby, who works as an inspector at a poultry plant a few hours away and serves as the president of her union local. “Certain ones stop by all the time to talk to you. If the light changes [green], they’ll keep going and holler at you.”

Mona Darby, who works as an inspector at a poultry plant a few hours away and serves as the president of her union local, said she has spent so much time interacting with workers at the Amazon warehouse entrances that she knows which ones would make good reps if the employees unionize. (Photo: Bob Miller for HuffPost)

Working the entrances takes backbone. Darby said one particular man leaving the facility ― “the white guy in the truck” ― often heckles them. There have been times when someone would pull up in a car, post up across the street at night and watch the organizers in silence. Early on in the campaign, she said, a white man told her he didn’t want her “Black ass” around the warehouse.

Joshua Brewer, the RWDSU’s lead organizer for the Amazon campaign, said the union made a strategic decision early on to never leave their spots ― except for Christmas Day. At first, union members and organizers held the posts around the clock, so that no worker left the facility without passing them.

Several of the union members who are organizing work in poultry plants, and they wore industrial freezer gear to battle temperatures that dropped into the teens. Warehouse workers could see them jumping around to stay warm. Eventually, the union pulled back on the midshift hours, when they were unlikely to encounter much traffic.

Brewer, who spent many days at the entrances himself, said there is a fine line between showing dedication and looking a little sad.

“We didn’t want the workers worrying about us,” he said with a laugh.

In Brewer’s office in downtown Birmingham, about 25 minutes from the warehouse, there is a laminated poster showing a blown-up satellite image of the warehouse, with symbols at each spot where workers enter or leave, along with organizers’ names in dry-erase marker denoting their schedules there.

Brewer said he and other organizers were stunned at how rapidly Amazon workers signed union cards in the fall. Some of those cards were signed online due to the pandemic, but the union says a majority of them were paper cards with signatures. That legwork is essential to any organizing effort.

The red light at the main entrance offers organizers only a short window of time to talk to workers. As the news organization More Perfect Union reported, the light sequence was changed in the middle of the union campaign, allowing less time. Amazon had asked the county to alter the sequence late last year, and the county said it changed it because of traffic backups.

Some union organizers anticipate still being at the warehouse gates even after the union organizing ballots are counted. Either Amazon or the union may challenge ballots that are cast, and it could be several days or weeks before it’s clear whether the union won. (Photo: Bob Miller for HuffPost)

Tray Ragland, a poultry worker who has been at the entrances for several weeks, said he often ends up swapping numbers with employees so an organizer can speak to them later.

“I’m trying to get everything out as fast as I can at the red light,” Ragland said.

Darby said her most productive shift led to a dozen cards in a three-hour span. Some workers hopped out of their cars at the red light and signed them right against a streetlight pole; some signed them in a nearby bus shelter. Others were understandably afraid of managers seeing them talking to organizers near the property, so the union set up a tent with RWDSU signage a little less than a mile away, outside a Circle K. Organizers at the entrances would steer workers to the tent.

Randy Hadley, president of the RWDSU’s Mid-South Council, recalled that the day after they erected the tent he noticed the car dealership across the street had run an Amazon flag up one of the flagpoles. He took it as a sign of disapproval of the union.

But the cards kept coming. Brewer would stash them in piles on top of a bookshelf in his office. One day when he encountered some Amazon managers at the warehouse entrance, he held up a stack of signed cards. He suggested Amazon voluntarily recognize the union, eliminating the need for an election, and then “everyone can go home.” They declined Brewer’s offer.

The union stopped gathering cards once an election was scheduled to begin in February. Since then, the effort on the ground has mostly been about building rapport. Ragland said most of those who will vote seem to have made up their minds already, with less than two weeks left in voting. In recent days he has spoken to a few workers who already voted against the union but regret it.

“They say, ‘Dang, I wish I voted yes now,’” he said.

Darby and Aguilar anticipate still being at the gates even after the ballots are counted. Either Amazon or the union may challenge ballots that are cast, and it could be several days or weeks before it’s clear whether the union won. In the meantime, Darby said it’s important that workers still see her face.

“We didn’t want them to think we got these cards and then abandoned them,” she said.

Related...

Why Amazon Insisted On An In-Person Union Election During A Raging Pandemic

Amazon Workers' Fight To Unionize Draws Help From Around The World

The Amazon Union Election Is Unusual. Amazon's Robust Anti-Union Campaign Isn't.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Democrats saved union pensions after Teamsters Hoffa's long campaign

Jonathan Allen
Tue, March 16, 2021

WASHINGTON — No one knows better that elections have consequences than labor union leaders, who secured an $83 billion pension-fund bailout in President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan Act.

"Without Joe Biden winning, and we won the two Senate seats in Georgia and we were able to do reconciliation, none of this would’ve happened," James P. Hoffa, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said in a telephone interview with NBC News. "The Republicans weren’t going to do it.

The Teamsters' Central States pension fund, covering nearly 400,000 workers and retirees, is the marquee beneficiary of pension provisions attached to the larger relief bill. But labor leaders say as many as 200 plans will be shored up, providing direct benefit to as many as 1.5 million people in the short term, and many more overall.

"That means the difference between eating and not eating, and having a good retirement and one where you’re basically out there working trying to survive," Hoffa said. "The No. 1 priority, we've solved it."

This account of the Teamsters' drive to save retirement plans for millions of pensioners is drawn from interviews with several of the union's officials, congressional sources and the public record. It begins with one Hoffa, the late Teamsters chief James R. Hoffa, and the Central States pension fund he started. And it ends with a years long campaign by his son, James P. Hoffa, to work the levers of influence in Washington to salvage the retirement money of union members.

Every Republican voted against the Covid-19 relief measure, and many of them specifically targeted the pension legislation for derision because they said it was an expensive gift from Democratic leaders to labor allies that would be funded by taxpayers.

"Americans know this bill will benefit states and unions that have been poorly mismanaged," Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said on the House floor.

Over time, union rolls have dwindled, meaning there have not been enough active workers contributing to pension funds to meet the obligations owed to retirees. Officials with the Teamsters union point to Washington's deregulation of transportation industries in the 1970s and '80s as a driver of the problem. The markets played a role, too, with busts taking an enormous toll on the Central States fund and similar multiemployer union pensions.

The Central States fund was due to go broke by 2025 without assistance, and many of its beneficiaries had already suffered cuts in their checks as a result of a 2014 law that allowed pension trustees to approve reductions in an effort to remain solvent.

That law, part of a broader budget measure signed by President Barack Obama, kicked the Teamsters into overdrive because it paved the way for pension plans to slash benefits for retirees to stay afloat. Worse yet, the unfunded liabilities were massive enough to push the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation into oblivion.

Democrats stepped in this month with the proposal to pump money into the troubled pensions.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said during House consideration of the American Rescue Plan Act that he doesn't think of the pension provisions as a bailout.

"It's a backstop," said Neal, who sponsored the pension measure before it was folded into the American Rescue Plan Act. "If we didn't come to the support of these pensions, it would take down the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures pensions for Americans in the private sector."

Republicans, of course, saw things differently.

"They will continue to be chronically underfunded," Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, said. "This problem needs to be fixed, but this plan does nothing to fix the problem."

Teamsters labour union James P. Hoffa speaks at a news conference regarding truck drivers striking against what they say are misclassification of workers at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in Long Beach (Bob Riha Jr / Reuters file)

About seven years ago, Hoffa tapped John Murphy, a senior vice president for the Teamsters, to build a lobbying campaign that combined a dedicated team in the union's Washington office and grassroots pressure from union-retiree constituents calling and visiting lawmakers.

The Teamsters and other labor leaders brought Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to a town hall meeting in Detroit in July 2018 to talk to several hundred union members. At the time, they were pushing Washington to help with a less-generous loan program backed by Treasury bonds.

"We have a defined challenge to our country that we should not be facing, because it's just not fair and it's just not right," Pelosi told the crowd, according to The Detroit News. Every time she saw Hoffa in recent years, she would greet him with the word "pensions" before he could get it out. When Democrats took control of the House in 2019, Pelosi moved the loan-program bill through the House. But it was dead on arrival in the Senate, where then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opposed the costly fix.

Then, when Democrats won power in the Senate in January on the strength of a pair of run-off election victories in Georgia, the dynamics of the pension issue changed dramatically. Instead of asking unions to address their pension liabilities through a loan program, Democrats saw an opportunity to inject tens of billions of dollars of relief into the multiemployer pensions to keep them solvent for the next few decades.

Biden, who framed much of his campaign around rebuilding unions as a path to strengthening the middle class, was on board. Hoffa spoke to him repeatedly about the issue during the 2020 election cycle.

"He said 'I'll be there,'" Hoffa said. "He was very well aware of it."

But Democrats hold very thin margins in the House and Senate. Any defection could have scrapped the provision or the whole bill.

Murphy was so glued to his television screen during overnight Senate votes on March 5 and 6 that his wife told him he needed to "get a hobby" that didn't involve tracking procedural maneuvers in the wee hours.

He grew more nervous when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voted with Republicans on an unrelated amendment that would have shortened the relief bill's bonus unemployment benefits from September to July. But when Manchin later gave Democrats a 50-49 majority on an amendment changing the horizon to Sept. 6, Murphy's spirits lifted.

"It wasn’t until he came back home on that unemployment that I really felt good that we were going to do it," Murphy said. "It was razor-thin."

'Our ancestors' dreams come true': 

Deb Haaland becomes the nation's most powerful Native American leader

Marco della Cava and Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY

Mon, March 15, 2021, 

LONG READ

More than a dozen years ago, Alvin Warren’s phone rang. He was handling Indian affairs for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and knew all the key people in his field.

“She said her name was Deb Haaland,” Warren recalled. “I’d never heard of her.”

Haaland was volunteering for the presidential campaign of a senator named Barack Obama, and she wanted Warren to travel to the Laguna Pueblo, the Native American enclave Haaland hailed from, to speak to locals about the election’s importance.

When Warren arrived, he found potluck food and 20 people. Haaland apologized for the low turnout. He waved her off, impressed by the unknown activist's embrace of grassroots politics and tireless work ethic.

Fast forward since then and the number of people who have heard of Haaland has grown exponentially. Now that same political savvy she used to mobilize Native voters in 2008 for a victorious Obama has helped her once again make history.

Haaland, 60, was confirmed Monday as President Joe Biden's Interior Secretary, making the former New Mexico congresswoman, who took office in 2019, not just the most powerful Native American politician in the nation's history, but also the first one to run a department whose centuries of broken promises and benign neglect has contributed to the slow erosion of Indigenous culture.

Deb Haaland has become the first Native American to be secretary of the Interior, a position that traditionally has held negative sway over Indian country. Native activists are hopeful Haaland's confirmation leads to changes for the nearly 600 federal tribes across the United States.

The Cabinet post requires balancing the competing needs of disparate factions, including energy companies looking to extract mineral rights, conservation groups hoping to preserve the national parks, and, significantly, Native activists who will look to Haaland's oversight of the department's Bureau of Indian Affairs to help fix inadequate healthcare, poor education and crumbling infrastructure. Haaland is the nation's first Native American Cabinet member.

Native American hopes already are soaring.

"The history of federal Indian policy has been a history of people who had no idea what was best for us,” said Warren, who works on Native education issues for the non-profit Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation in Española, New Mexico. “To have someone in that position who has lived our experience, who knows the beauty of our culture, of our family traditions, of our struggles, you can’t overstate the impact of that."

Alicia Ortega, founder of Albuquerque-based advocacy group Native Women Lead, said simply, “It’s our ancestors' dreams come true."

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the House majority whip making history as the highest-ranking African American in Congress, pushed Biden to nominate Haaland, arguing for the historical importance of having a Native American at Interior.

“It was time to break that ceiling," he said.

Haaland senses the magnitude of the moment.

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of the Interior,” she tweeted after her nomination. “It’s profound to think about the history of this country’s policies to exterminate Native Americans and the resilience of our ancestors that gave me a place here today.”

Haaland declined an interview with USA TODAY before her confirmation hearing, but conversations with nearly two dozen friends, peers and critics tell a fundamentally American story whose cinematic arc defies the elitist cliches that often shadow lawmakers.

New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland is shown here in 2018 speaking to supporters during a visit to the Albuquerque Indian Center in Albuquerque, N.M.

Haaland has a hardscrabble, mixed-race, military-family backstory that includes working as a baker after high school and, later, selling salsa from her car to make ends meet. Four days after graduating college at age 33, she gave birth to her only child, daughter Somáh, who is now an activist in her own right supporting Native and LGBTQ causes.

The single mother struggled financially, bunking with friends when money ran short. Then in her 40s and 50s, self-realization: personal passions such as cooking and long-distance running mixed with increasingly important political roles that led to Congress, where she was likely among a few lawmakers still paying off up to $50,000 in student loan debt.

Friends describe a woman with both a huge appetite for life and a natural gift for politics who cares deeply, whether it's mentoring young people of color, collecting food for the homeless or fighting for civil rights causes.

“She’s not in it for the fame or the glory," said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. "She’s in it to see real results.”

From selling salsa to the halls of Congress

Debra Anne Haaland, known as Deb, was born December 2, 1960, in Winslow, Arizona. A military brat and one of five children, Haaland attended 13 public schools around the country before settling in New Mexico.

Haaland's sense of service was seeded by her parents. Her mother, Mary Toya, was in the Navy and worked as a federal employee in Indian education, while her father, John David, also known as J.D. and "Dutch," was a 30-year Marine who was awarded the Silver Star for saving six lives in Vietnam.

Debra Haaland, a Democratic candidate for Congress, speaks at her Albuquerque, N.M., headquarters in June 2018, as volunteers seek last-minute voters for the Democratic nomination for an open congressional seat in central New Mexico.

Although Haaland is proud of her father's Norwegian heritage — The Norwegian American trumpeted her 2018 Congressional win with the headline "Norwegian American Deb Haaland makes history" — her mother's Pueblo Indian roots are foundational to her identity and were reflected in the elaborate turquoise, black and red outfit Haaland wore for her swearing-in ceremony.

There are upward of 600 Native American federally and state-recognized tribes around the United States and two dozen of them are made up of Pueblo enclaves scattered across New Mexico.

Many Native Americans were marched at gunpoint by federal troops off their land and onto reservations that held no historical meaning. But Pueblo Indians have a history of resistance — including the infamous Pueblo Revolt in 1680 that temporarily chased the Spanish from New Mexico — that has kept them on ancestral lands for the past 7,000 years. Haaland often says she is a 35th generation New Mexican.

A combination of a duty to serve and a dedication to her people quickly came to define Haaland's life.

Although Haaland was an English major, political science professor Fred Harris, who led the Democratic National Committee in the late '60s and ran for president in the early '70s, sensed a likeminded soul when they met in his politics class at the University of New Mexico.

“You could tell right away this was a very smart and very committed person,” said Harris, who successfully convinced Haaland to apply to law school a few years later.

More lean times followed as she worked her way through graduate school doing a variety of jobs, including making and selling Pueblo Salsa. At one particularly dire juncture, she and Somáh were sharing a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate when financial concerns led them to move out and find shelter with friends.

After she graduated from the University of New Mexico Law School in 2006, Haaland's political activism took wing, leading to steady jobs that eased her financial worries.

Leslie Begay, left, speaks with Rep. Deb Haaland, D-New Mexico, in a hallway outside a congressional field hearing in 2019 in Albuquerque, N.M.

After volunteering for Obama's first campaign by getting out the Native vote, she landed top jobs at both the Laguna and San Felipe Pueblos, where she oversaw tribal gaming and implemented environmentally friendly business practices such as recycling. In 2012, she helped Obama win re-election as the state's vote director for Native Americans, and then served as Native caucus chair for the state Democratic party.

Haaland's horizons, once clouded by financial and housing insecurity, were becoming as vast and inviting as the great desert plains of her home state.
Why run for office? 'Why not?'

In 2014, Haaland decided to run for New Mexico lieutenant governor alongside gubernatorial hopeful and state Attorney General Gary King. Native activist Warren, who stayed in touch with Haaland after their meeting at the Laguna Pueblo, remembers asking her why she had decided to run for a state leadership post.

Haaland looked at Warren and said simply, "Why not?"

"That struck me. So many of us, especially Native women, have had the message delivered to us that we aren’t the ones who run for office," said Warren. "But Deb said ‘I won’t let that restrict me.’”

It is a message she has been keen to pass along to a new generation of activists. While running for lieutenant governor, Haaland received an email from a college student who was inspired by seeing a Native American woman aiming for high office. The student, Paulene Abeyta, asked how she could help.

Rep. Debra Haaland, at the podium, seeks support from local party delegates at the Democratic Party preprimary convention in Pojoaque, N.M., in March 2020. Haaland has been working on Native American causes since volunteering for presidential hopeful Barack Obama's campaign in 2008.

Haaland replied immediately. “She told me, ‘You can run for office, too,’ So I did,” said Abeyta, who went on to win a school board seat. She is now a third-year law student at the University of Arizona and president of the National Native American Law School Students Association.

“There’s tons of us she’s inspired, she’s awakened," said Abeyta, who is Navajo.

Haaland lost her bid for lieutenant governor, but instead of retreating she successfully set her sights on leading the state's Democratic Party. The two-year term started in 2015, a job that often found her visiting the state's 33 geographically distant counties to increase Democratic voter rolls alongside vice-chair Juan Sanchez.

Haaland's passion for the state and its deep Native history was always on display. “We couldn’t drive past a hill or a mountain without her telling me the significance of it to her people," said Sanchez.

He also bore witness to her kindness toward strangers, something often observed by the congresswoman's friends. One cross-state trip started at 4 a.m., and by the time the pair stopped at a filling station in the town of Truth or Consequences, they were famished.

As gas filled the tank, Haaland stocked up on Cheez-Its and Chex Mix.

"I was so excited to eat,” Sanchez recalled. “As we pulled out, we saw a guy with a sign, ‘Hungry, anything helps.’ Deb stopped, gave him all our food and four hours later we finally ate. That's just who she is."

Haaland's dedicated work across New Mexico did not go unnoticed. Lujan Grisham remains impressed by the way Haaland took the state’s Democratic party “and rebuilt it and cemented a platform for success that continues to this day.”

Much like Stacey Abrams' groundbreaking work in Georgia for the Democrats, Haaland is credited with helping members of her party regain New Mexico's House of Representatives and secretary of state posts in 2016.

Democratic Congressional candidate Sharice Davids talks to supporters at her campaign office in October 2018 in Overland Park, Kansas.

In 2018, she ran against five Democrats in the state's 1st Congressional District, which is 68% white. With a progressive platform that included Medicare-for-all, $15 minimum wage and renewable energy, she won 40% of the vote. She then handily beat Republican counterpart Janice Arnold-Jones for the congressional seat — in doing so becoming only the second Native American woman in Congress after Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids, who hails from Wisconsin's Ho-Chunk Nation.

Last fall, Haaland's campaign efforts helped her handily win again, helped by the blue tide that surged in reaction to the presidency of Donald Trump. In a few Instagram posts last fall under the name CoffeeQueer, daughter Somáh shared photos of her mother washing the family dogs ahead of Election Day.

“You guys, my mom is working so hard every single day,” she wrote of her mother’s campaign fundraising efforts. “On top of all this she somehow finds time to do things like cook dinner and bake cakes and gives the pups a trim. She genuinely cares so much and she would do absolutely anything for her community.”

Haaland can train a spotlight on Native issues

On Capitol Hill, Haaland became known as someone who would not be ignored.

“She’s very, very respectful and pleasant to work with, but she wasn’t going to wait for her turn to speak up,’’ said Florida Rep. Lois Frankel, co-chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus, where Haaland is caucus vice-chair.

“She’s one of those who is willing to listen to people, to work across the aisle,’’ Frankel added. “She’s not a flamethrower.”

Haaland supported the bipartisan Great American Outdoor Act, which among other things provided money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and funds maintenance backlog at national parks. She also was co-sponsor of the bipartisan Not Invisible Act of 2019, which aimed to reduce violent crime on Native American lands and against Native Americans.

Last spring, as the novel coronavirus began to ravage healthcare-challenged Native American communities, Haaland pushed to improve broadband service on reservations, eliminate some bureaucratic red tape for access to federal aid and address concerns about the lack of running water on some reservations.

"We just have ignored or neglected certain communities of color along the way and it's come to this," she told USA TODAY in an interview in April. "Indian country has been left behind for decades."

With Haaland's new role as Interior secretary, many Native American leaders said she will face great expectations tempered by the historical reality.

“We know these problems we’ve had with the federal government can’t be solved overnight, because they’ve been going on for 400 years,” said Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians and Quinault Tribal Nation in Washington State.

Judith LeBlanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance, a national political organizing group, said Haaland’s big tasks will include helping Native Americans deal with the disproportionate COVID-19 virus sickening and killing people of color, who are three times more likely to die than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She also has a chance to “reset the relationship” between Indigenous people and the Interior Department, LeBlanc said.

But the voices looking to bend her ear will be many, including conservation groups, ranchers, hunters and fishermen and mining companies. “Every environmentalist would love this job, but it comes with an incredible number of challenges," said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s land protection program.

Angeline Cheek, left, a community organizer from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, speaks about the potential environmental damage from the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada during a demonstration in Billings, Montana, in October 2019.

Haaland's task will be a giant balancing act, often weighing her own passion for environmental issues with the financial realities of many stakeholders — including some Native American tribes whose incomes weigh heavily on energy exploration.

"Deb will have to deal with tribes who still need to be convinced that taking the billions of dollars from those companies for the rights to their land rights isn’t worth it,” said O.J. Semans, co-executive director of Four Directions, a legal advocacy group headquartered on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation.

About a dozen House Republicans voiced their opposition to Haaland and asked Biden to recall her nomination. Their January 26 letter said Haaland, a vice-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is a “direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources.”

In her new role, she joins the ranks of the many, mostly white men who have served in presidential cabinets.

Months ago, just before the start of a hearing of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands subcommittee, U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, a Democrat from Nevada and first vice-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was talking with Haaland, who chairs the panel, about the portraits of the past chairman that lined the walls.

Newly-elected House Members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, left, and Deb Haaland, D-NM, depart following a class photo outside of the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, in Washington

.
Horsford remembered Haaland pointing out the frontiersmen and other white men being honored in the room.

“That’s one of the things that sticks with me about my interactions with her," he said, noting the importance of challenging symbols when they offend others.

“She brings a perspective that is very unique and that only she can," said Horsford. "I’m excited about the fact that she will now be over the very agency that can make those kinds of advances. It’s not on her to do it alone, but she will be able to lead it.”

Elizabeth Day, community engagement project manager at the Native American Community Development Institute in Minneapolis, said Haaland’s reputation across Indian country is “one of great respect,” even more so “now that she’s going into the heart of the beast.”

Day said Native activists across the nation will be energized like never before by Haaland's position as Interior secretary.

“I always repeat this, we need more than a seat at the table, we need to create the menu,” she said. “This could be it. Deb can be the cook in the kitchen.”

Follow USA TODAY national correspondents @marcodellacava and @dberrygannett

Enbridge asks Canadian government to support oil pipeline in dispute with Michigan


A sign warning of a high pressure petroleum pipeline is seen on the "Line 9" Enbridge oil pipeline route along the Don Rive in East Don Parkland in Toronto

Nia Williams
Tue, March 16, 2021

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc asked the Canadian government on Tuesday to champion its Line 5 oil pipeline in a legal battle with the state of Michigan, which is trying to shut down the pipeline over concerns it could leak into the Great Lakes.

Calgary-based Enbridge is also asking Ottawa to provide support for its U.S. federal court filings on Line 5, Vern Yu, Enbridge executive vice president of liquids pipelines, told a federal parliamentary committee.


The dispute between Enbridge and Michigan has escalated as a May deadline to shut down the 540,000-barrel-per-day pipeline looms closer.

Line 5 is a key part of the Enbridge pipeline network supplying refineries in eastern Canada and the U.S. Midwest with western Canadian crude. Leaders in both countries are trying to reduce their economies' dependence on fossil fuels, although Canada is supporting the ongoing operation of Line 5, especially after U.S. President Joe Biden canceled permits for the cross-border Keystone XL pipeline project.

Late last year, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered Line 5 to cease operating by May over concerns a 4-mile (6.4-km) section running along the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac could leak.

Enbridge is challenging that order in U.S. federal court, and the company has proposed building a $500 million underwater tunnel to protect the pipeline beneath the Straits.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has already said it will look at all options to keep Line 5 operating, including invoking the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty.

"We request the government of Canada use every pathway to assert that Line 5 is an important binational pipeline protected by the treaty, whose shutdown would have grave impacts for both the United States and Canada," Enbridge's Yu said.

Enbridge does not expect the pipeline will be forced to shut down in May, Yu said, because Michigan needs a court injunction to enforce its order. He added, however, that court battles over the pipeline could go on for "many, many" years.

"I think it's essential that we try to come up with a mediated, negotiated diplomatic solution that takes us out of the hands of the court and provides a reasonable outcome for everyone involved," Yu said.

Enbridge and Michigan had their first meeting with a court-appointed joint mediator last weekend, Yu said, but he declined to comment on how that went.

(Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

Jane Fonda visits Minnesota to protest Line 3 oil pipeline replacement



Torey Van Oot
Tue, March 16, 2021

Actress and activist Jane Fonda made a cameo in Northern Minnesota yesterday to protest the Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project.

What she's saying: "We're here to try to stop it," Fonda said in a video posted to Twitter.

The backdrop: Construction on the Minnesota portion of the Enbridge Energy project began in December, following approval from state regulators.

Opponents, who want the Biden administration to halt progress, have been demonstrating near the site for months.

The other side: A group of House Republicans who support the project slammed Fonda's claims as "truly Oscar worthy" in a statement:

"This project has been studied time and time again and found to be safe for the environment and good for the economy."

School's solar panel savings give every teacher up to $15,000 raises

Tue, March 16, 2021

Renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar are generating more power in the U.S. than coal. Ben Tracy visits a rural Arkansas school district using the sun's rays in an unusual way.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- In our "Eye on Earth" series, we can share a bit of good news in the battle against climate change. Cleaner renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar are generating more power in the US than coal. That's encouraging because burning coal produces planet-warming emissions. It makes sea levels rise and weather more extreme. CBS News senior environmental correspondent Ben Tracy visited a school district in Arkansas that's turning sunrays into paydays.

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Let's review real quickly.

BEN TRACY: Jeanne Roepcke has been a teacher in Arkansas for 24 years.

Why are you a teacher?

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Oh my gosh, the students. Absolutely, completely the students.

BEN TRACY: Can I assume you don't do this for the money?

JEANNE ROEPCKE: (LAUGHING) If you're in it for the money, it's the wrong profession. You know, its not the right choice.

BEN TRACY: Roepcke's school district in Batesville, Arkansas, prides itself on putting students first, but when it came to paying its teachers, Batesville was next to last in this part of the state. Salaries averaged about $45,000.

MICHAEL HESTER: And we weren't keeping people because of that.

BEN TRACY: Michael Hester is Batesville's superintendent. He was losing teachers and having a hard time getting new ones to move to this rural Arkansas town of about 10,000 people.

MICHAEL HESTER: People aren't in this business obviously for the money, but they should not have a vow to poverty to teach either.

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Thank you.

BEN TRACY: Jeanne Roepcke has been working five nights a week at the local community center just to make ends meet. But then she started hearing a rumor--

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Oh yeah. Teachers love to talk.

BEN TRACY: --about an unusual solution to Batesville's budget problems--

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Well, at first you're like, what is that about? Really what's that about?

BEN TRACY: --that would allow this school district to truly live up to its name.

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Don't sleep on Arkansas. We'll surprise you every time.

BEN TRACY: This school took an unused field out back and filled it with hundreds of solar panels. It also put up a new solar canopy stretching across the entire front of the high school-- in all, nearly 1,500 panels aimed at recharging Batesville's budget.

RICK VANCE: Now Batesville is the Pioneers. And they really did pioneer solar in Arkansas.

BEN TRACY: Rick Vance works for the local energy company that helped the district save more than $600,000 in utility costs.

RICK VANCE: They did it at a time when no one else was doing it. Well now, everybody's doing it.

BEN TRACY: Solar power costs a lot less than it used to, mainly because it's now cheaper to make the panels. In the past decade the price of solar has dropped 89%. So to both save money and the planet, more than 7,000 schools across the country are now using solar power. That's up 81% in just five years.

But as far as anyone can tell, Batesville is the only school district that's turn panels into paychecks.

RICK VANCE: Batesville has reduced the checks they write to utilities and increased the checks they write to teachers.

BEN TRACY: With the money it saved and made by selling electricity back to the grid, Batesville has handed out bonuses two years in a row, boosting every teacher's salary by as much as $15,000. The district, once one of the worst, is now the best paying in the county.

Are you getting more resumes these days from teachers who want to come work here?

MICHAEL HESTER: Not only are we getting more resumes, we're getting fewer resignations.

JEANNE ROEPCKE: That's good.

BEN TRACY: Jeanne Roepcke has seen her pay go up by thousands of dollars, enough to dig out of debt and cut way back on her hours at the community center.

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Thank you.

BEN TRACY: Did you ever in your life imagine you'd get a raise because of solar panels?

JEANNE ROEPCKE: Nope. No, it would not have been one of the things that I thought. But, what a great idea. The sun is going to be shining anyway, so why not cash in on that?

BEN TRACY: And she's grateful her school realizes that putting students first starts with their teachers.

JEANNE ROEPCKE: It's good to know that they care about us. It feels really, really good.

BEN TRACY: Now our teacher, Jeanne, says one of the best parts about not having to work all those hours at her second job is she has more time to help out her students who are learning from home because of COVID. And, you know, schools across the country are using their solar panels in different ways. Here in Washington, DC, this school put their solar installation above their parking lot. Anthony, you get a little solar shade here when you park your car.

- (LAUGHING) I like everything about this story, Ben. Thank you very much. More pay for teachers, solar panels--

- And we like teacher Jeanne.

- Yeah, we do.

- Yeah.

- I wish she was on of my teachers. You can feel her energy just jump off the screen.

- Put a solar panel in front of her. You'll pick up the power.

- Yeah, we like her.

- She's great.

- That was great, Ben.