Pledging Pro-Worker Approach to Trade, Foreign Policy

At a roundtable with union leaders, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged that new trade pacts and related foreign policy will help American workers.

“Our domestic competitiveness, our national security, and a thriving middle class are mutually reinforcing,” Blinken said. “We want to make sure that we’re engaged in an innovation economy that delivers for workers across the country.”

He spoke with a group that included now-retired Pittsburgh Local 5 Business Manager Mike Dunleavy and representatives from the Steelworkers, Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, Communications Workers of America, Service Employees International, the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council and Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Blinken arrived at Local 5’s sprawling hall and training center after a day and a half of international meetings in Pittsburgh with the administration’s newly created Trade and Technology Council.

“The issues we’re taking on through this council are critical to our economy, to our competitiveness, and to our workers’ livelihoods, now and well into the future,” he said. “We believe strongly—the president believes strongly—that labor groups have to be our partner in policy, that includes foreign policy.”

Dunleavy met last year with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and last June his local hosted Vice President Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh for a roundtable with a cross section of union organizers.

“With this administration, the outreach to labor is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Dunleavy said.

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