Deluzio vows to attack ‘the raw corporate power that is sucking the lifeblood’ out of workers, communities

U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio once again raised his right hand and took the oath of his office on Thursday, only this time the event took place during a sane daylight hour and everything was orderly. Oh, and no one was brawling. 

“This swearing-in is a lot better than the one we did in January,” Deluzio told a crowd of supporters at the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters hall in Collier. That event was delayed by Republican squabbles over the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.

“It was 2 in the morning on a Saturday, there were 15 rounds of votes, there was chaos, there was dysfunction, there was almost a fistfight on the floor — a real one. So this is better,” said Deluzio, who represents the state’s 17th District.

Of course, Deluzio’s second swearing-in was purely ceremonial, but it gave him a chance to thank his family and supporters and to lay out his thoughts about what ails the country and what he plans to do about it.

Deluzio began a 10-minute speech by pointing out the sacrifices made by Western Pennsylvania families who sent sons to fight wars, then he quickly pivoted to other, more local battles. “We didn’t just spill blood fighting in foreign lands,” he said. “This is sacred ground for the labor movement, whose sacrifices gave the American worker so much that we have today.”

Deluzio ripped into the forces of corporate America and globalization, which “looked at Western Pennsylvania and plotted how they could strip us for parts.”

Those forces closed factories and mills, weakened unions, shipped jobs to the American South, where unions are weak, and to overseas countries where workers are exploited, pushed anti-union laws, and signed trade deals that gutted what’s now known as the Rust Belt.

“Well, they got what they wanted,” Deluzio said. “Last month, China made 55% of the world’s steel. American produced just around 5%.”

Consolidations and mergers create corporate giants that kill small businesses, dictate terms to workers, neglect research and development and put Wall Street concerns ahead of the concerns of communities, he said.

Deluzio cited the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine as an example. The railroad company lobbied Washington to block new brake rules and keep safety regulations weak. In addition, he noted, Norfolk Southern fought against worker sick days, attempted to weaken staffing requirements and refused to prioritize safety.

“Their culture of greed and incompetence has come to our front door and hurt my constituents in Beaver County, our neighbors,” Deluzio said. “I’ve been fighting to hold this railroad fully accountable for every penny of pain they’ve caused, and to keep the people of this district safe.”

Deluzio then took aim at Block Communications Inc., owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where more than 100 newspaper workers have been on strike for nearly five months. BCI, he said, exhibits an “obsession with profit at any cost.”

He noted the company’s purchase of Pittsburgh City Paper, a move he’s asked the U.S. Dept. of Justice to investigate to see if it violates antitrust laws. 

“And while they’re doing this, we know they’re in a brutal and vicious fight against their workers and their unions,” he said. He then introduced James “Hutchie” VanLandingham, a striking Post-Gazette mailer who’d been Deluzio’s guest at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., in January.

Deluzio ended his speech by vowing to “attack head-on the raw corporate power that is sucking the lifeblood out of our workers and our communities.”

He called for a government that fights to protect “your right to love who you love” and a woman’s right to make decisions about pregnancy, and vowed to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits.

But at its heart Deluzio’s speech centered on labor — building “the best infrastructure in the world” with union labor and bringing union manufacturing jobs back to Western Pennsylvania.

“Freedom to me means the right to have a good job, to form and join a union, to have an economy that rewards work, not wealth.”