In a resolution passed this week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council endorsed US pipelines, but not the Keystone XL, a risky export pipeline widely criticized by many union allies and ranchers and farmers along the proposed route.
America’s Building Trades Unions has since misrepresented the AFL-CIO’s resolution saying the AFL-CIO has endorsed the controversial tar sands pipeline, which they did not.
LIUNA and the Building Trades should come clean about their cozy relationship with the very groups (AFP, ALEC, Koch brothers) that all unions identify as entities that are trying to destroy unions long-term. Yet, because of this risky project, they work side by side with Koch groups.
Moreover, in its statement this evening, the Building Trades Unions claim that the pipeline will create 20,000 jobs–a number that has been widely invalidated by mainstream press and university research.
Politifact called this 20,000 figure “false” and WaPo issued 2 “pinocchios” for the claim.
Cornell University issued two reports on job numbers and economic impacts/risks.
1) Jobs/economy report
2) Economic impact of spills
As Media Matters documents, the 20,000 claim is among a number of false job numbers that TransCanada and its allies have been circulating.
Above everything else, we don’t even need any of these well-researched reports telling us these figures are outrageously inflated. All we have to do is look at Keystone 1 job numbers which showed us no more than 5,000 temporary construction jobs were created. We can also look at a southern pipeline being built by TransCanada that extends Keystone 1 and roughly 850 folks are working on that pipeline construction project. Not the 4,000 TransCanada recently claimed or the 20,000 the Laborers claim.