Johnson's testimony before the MN House Committe

Local 49 Business Manager Glen Johnson testified before the Minnesota House Transportation Finance Committee on February 13, 2008. He urged lawmakers to pass a transportation funding bill that would create 33-thousand new jobs and repair or replace dozens of roads and bridges in Minnesota.

Below is the transcript of his testimony:

Welcome Mr. Chairman and Committee members. My name is Glen Johnson with the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 49. I am known far and wide & but mostly wide.

Our membership consists of about 13-thousand active, working men and women in the state of Minnesota & in every county in Minnesota. Last year, we had 13,500 working man and woman hours. In the year 2007, we had 11,200 working hours. We have about 5,700 unemployed workers sitting on the bench waiting to go to work today.

The Operating Engineers run heavy equipment. We build roads and bridges. We mine the gravel. We make the aggregate. We make the asphalt that gets put on the roads, and we put the concrete on the roads. We do the paving. When those people are not working, they do not have healthcare. They're not building their pensions. They are going backwards in life. It is costing the state money every time people are on unemployment.

I was sent here today on behalf of 13,000 members in the state of Minnesota to ask a couple of questions. We know we have lost 23,000 jobs over the last six months. Typically, we increase jobs in the state of Minnesota. Our skilled labor pool is suffering casualties. The contractors that have been in business in the state of Minnesota for decades are going broke and going out of business & they are closing their doors. They are either going to go somewhere else to be competitive and make a living, and when the time comes, if and when there is funding in this state, who is going to be doing the work? Because the skilled labor pool is going to leave and go someplace where there is work. And the contractors that perform the work are going to be working elsewhere.

The solutions on the table. It has been on the table for several years. It is the transportation funding bill that addresses our long-term needs. You know, I was driving over here on 94 & the traffic was a little slow, so if I talk like this here...you will wonder because the pot-holes on that road drive me crazy. I drive it twice a day. It is an atrocity. I was driving on County Road 9 down in Goodhue County last night and it was like glass and I thought: My God, it be nice if our roads were like this.

The majority of Minnesotans voted to send you people here today that are on the committee. And they are asking me: We sent these Representatives here to do their jobs, they work hard; they did their job; they sweated it out. They came back with a bipartisan bill. They did that two years in a row & to no avail. Nothing happened. Was it wasted?

Were the dollars wasted? I ask when and what are you going to do about it? We got to get this thing done. We are missing out on the Federal Transportation dollars, the matching dollars, they are going to other states. When is it going to change?

The bottom line is a few people short on vision and courage are still blocking the road for everyone else. It may take another election and even higher gas prices for enough people to realize that there is no going back to the days of cheap transportation; cheap roads and bridges. We need to move forward.

The Operating Engineers represent 13,000 members & with their families that is about 60,000 people we are talking about here today. They are asking you to get this job done and pass this bill on a bipartisan basis. Thank you for your time today.