Mr. LYNCH. I thank the gentle lady from Guam for yielding me this time. I also would like to thank our chairman, Nick Rahall, and Ranking Member Doc Hastings of the Natural Resources Committee for their cooperation in allowing this bill to move forward.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1129, legislation to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide annual grants for the development of regional ironworker training programs for Native Americans. Notably, an identical version of this legislation passed the House of Representatives under suspension of the rules by the 110th Congress by a vote of 302-72.
Currently, only one ironworker training program that is specifically geared towards Native Americans exists in the United States, and that is the highly successful National Ironworkers Training Program for American Indians based in Broadview, Illinois. The Broadview program has stemmed from a strong and enduring partnership between the Federal Government's Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Ironworkers International Union, one that has lasted over 35 years.
Working in conjunction with the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers, the Broadview center provides highly specialized training in ironworking skills and related fabricating and welding shop classes and on-the-job education to Native American Indians from across the United States.
Upon completion of the program, each student possesses essential knowledge in union structure and history, OSHA safety regulations and a variety of ironworking skills, including blueprint reading and related math, arc welding and the erection of structural steel. Broadview graduates are subsequently placed as apprentices at local ironworker unions nationwide and, as a result, are afforded the opportunity to pursue productive and high-quality construction careers.
H.R. 1129 will build upon the success of the Broadview, Illinois, program by facilitating the establishment of regional ironworker training centers for Native Americans across the United States through the authorization of annual Interior Department grants. Mr. Speaker, the impetus behind the legislation is to provide occupational training to Native Americans residing in economically depressed communities, to accord them the opportunity to secure good jobs in the ironworking trade and ensure a solid future for themselves and their families.
H.R. 1129 also stems from and expands upon the ironworkers longstanding relationship with the Native American community. As a structural ironworker for 20 years, I have been a member of Iron Workers Local 7 for 30 years, and I am actually past president of that union. I am well aware of a longstanding contribution made by Native Americans to the ironworking industry.
As noted by the Ironworkers International Union and its president, Joe Hunt, Native Americans have been a part of ironworker history since 1886, when the St. Lawrence River was bridged on tribal land in Quebec and ironworkers' foremen first hired Native Americans as ironworkers.
In my own role here, as an ironworker apprentice, I worked under a number of Native American foremen and general foremen. It was a number of Native American journeymen ironworkers who taught me how to weld and gave me a chance at that trade. As an ironworker foreman and a general foreman myself, I had an opportunity to have a lot of young Native American Indians working in my crews, not only in the Boston area, but out in Indiana and Illinois, as well as New Mexico and Arizona.
And I have had a long relationship with members from the Navajo Tribe. I actually lived for a while on the Navajo Reservation, and I count those men and women as some of my closest friends, and I am greatly indebted to them. I also worked with members of the Apache Tribe and Mohawk Tribe in the New England area. This will really, I think, give a wonderful opportunity to Native Americans who have sort of adopted the ironworking industry as a family business. And it was not uncommon for me to be, as a Caucasian, a minority on a lot of the construction sites that I worked on in New Mexico and in other parts of the country where American Indians really provided the majority of the working members on those jobs.
Again, I would like to thank Chairman Rahall and Ranking Member Hastings for their wonderful support on this legislation, also, Member Dale Kildee, who has also put his shoulder to the wheel on this bill.
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