Labor

Senator [Tammy] Baldwin (D-WI) and I served together in the United States Senate. And it is, indeed, with her help, all across Wisconsin, that President Joe Biden and I have been able to create jobs, expand opportunity, and strengthen American manufacturing. We are here to discuss our continuation of that work. Take, for example, our work on high-speed Internet. In America in the 21st century, high-speed Internet is not a luxury.

Charter Communications will cover 100% of tuition costs for full-time employees pursuing select degrees and certificates through the new Charter Education Benefit powered by Guild.

This first-of-its-kind comprehensive approach is aimed at addressing both immediate and long-term cyber workforce needs. Filling the hundreds of thousands of cyber job vacancies across our nation is a national security imperative and the Administration is making generational investments to prepare our country to lead in the digital economy.

The world is facing a pressing need for a skilled workforce that can meet the demands of the 21st-century economy. That’s where workforce development comes in. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has created the Telecommunications Training and Workforce Development Best Practice Checklist to help support Eligible Entities as they’re developing their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) workforce plans. Verizon and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have collective bargaining agreements in place that, among other things, provide for high-

CommScope, a global telecommunications leader, plans to add 250 new jobs with a $60.3 million investment to expand its fiber-optic cable manufacturing operations in Catawba County, North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC) announced. CommScope develops, manufactures, installs, and supports network and hardware infrastructure for a digital society, such as the high-speed internet that connects people and places around the world. This project will upgrade the Catawba County facilities to increase the company’s capacity to produce fiber optic cable.

Oregon faces a range of challenges on the route to making broadband available throughout the state, said Nick Batz, director of the Oregon Broadband Office (OBO). “Our biggest challenge is the size of the state,” he said. “We’re roughly the size of the United Kingdom but have six percent of the population.

For decades, AT&T, Verizon, and other firms dating back to the old Bell System have known that the lead in their networks was a possible health risk to their workers and had the potential to leach into the nearby environment. They knew their employees working with lead regularly had high amounts of the metal in their blood, studies from the 1970s and ’80s show.

I’m starting to see situations where a shortage of construction labor is causing problems for some broadband providers. The supply chain issues for materials have largely been solved but the supply chain for construction contractors is a worsening situation for many providers. To give an example, I know a broadband provider with a long history of building networks that recently went to bid for two projects that are being funded by local American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant funding.

AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies have left behind a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that stretches across the US, under the water, in the soil, and on poles overhead. As the lead degrades, it is ending up in places where Americans live, work and play. The lead can be found on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the Detroit River in Michigan, the Willamette River in Oregon, and the Passaic River in New Jersey, according to tests of samples from nearly 130 underwater-cable sites, conducted by several independent laboratories.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) beat its June 30 deadline to announce the amounts it will award each state through its $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, but now the clock is ticking as states and broadband service providers await another milestone.