Anthony Vergara took a job at the Gallo Glass plant in Modesto, Calif., years ago because it offered good wages, family-sustaining benefits and the support of co-workers as committed as he was to building a stronger community.

Together, they’ve bounced back from a series of fires, weathered global competition and triumphed over other challenges to keep America’s largest glass container factory operating around the clock.

But while they take pride in driving Modesto’s present prosperity, Vergara said he and 700 other members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 17M realize that only a transformational “reset” will ensure the factory’s long-term survival in a highly competitive, ever-changing worldwide industry.

Fortunately, they’re now able to forge that path forward because of cutting-edge technology funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate two years ago to pass the IRA and unlock billions for an advanced manufacturing economy.

Not a single Republican in either chamber of Congress voted for this historic legislation, which is revolutionizing the cement, chemical, glass and steel sectors along with other traditional core industries.

IRA-funded projects are increasing efficiency, reducing costs and shoring up supply chains, better positioning the nation to manufacture the goods needed both for domestic consumption and to trade with the world.

JD Vance, the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate, made statements on the campaign trail showing he neither understands the IRA nor knows what it does.

But America’s working people get it.

The IRA created more than 170,000 jobs at home so far. And it’s projected to create at least 1.5 million more in coming years, including dozens of new positions at the Gallo plant under a Department of Energy (DOE) demonstration grant program also funded partly by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Bill Baker and Maryanne Tracy realized that the deck was stacked heavily against them when a giant mortgage company illegally attempted to foreclose on them in the midst of the nation’s housing crisis more than a decade ago.

Fortunately, a powerful ally came to their aid—Kamala Harris, then the state’s attorney general. She held the bank accountable, saved their home and ended up the couple’s friend.

It’s exactly that kind of crusade for fair treatment of working people that’s fueling burgeoning support for Harris’ presidential bid. Growing numbers of Americans are realizing what Baker and Tracy learned years ago:

The vice president stands for an America that lifts everyone up and leaves no one behind on the march to a stronger, more prosperous future.

“This is personal to us,” Tracy said of herself and her husband, longtime activists with the United Steelworkers (USW). “She fought for us. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.

“She’s for the working class 100 percent. She always has been. She’s always been for the underdog, you know?” explained Tracy, noting that her mortgage company was one of several collectively forced to pay billions to resolve Harris’ investigation into abusive foreclosure practices.

Tracy, who later worked in the Alameda County district attorney’s office, and Baker, a former mechanic in California’s trade show industry who served as secretary-treasurer of USW Local 1304, credit Harris with helping them through one of the darkest periods of their lives.

It’s a story they retell now to help others understand what’s at stake as Harris runs for the White House to continue the principled, pro-worker agenda she launched with Joe Biden.

The two point out that while Harris helps to safeguard the American dream, her opponent glories in his record as a convicted felon and wannabe dictator who attacked labor rights and stacked the courts and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against working people.

Dave Harvey credits the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with helping him make it to a healthy retirement.

OSHA implemented a standard in 2016 dramatically reducing workers’ exposure to silica in many workplaces, including the Du-Co Ceramics Co. plant in Western Pennsylvania where Harvey spent decades making ceramic electrical components.

Harvey’s union, the United Steelworkers (USW), long pushed OSHA to enact the rule and protect workers across the country from airborne silica dust, generated during manufacturing processes and other kinds of work involving rock, sand, gravel and clay. The substance lodges deep in the lungs, contributing to cancer, silicosis and other life-threatening ailments.

It would be foolhardy now to return to dustier workplaces that put workers’ lives at risk. But Harvey knows this nightmare scenario is a real threat with a right-wing Supreme Court that’s already gutting labor rights and will almost certainly attempt to institutionalize the subjugation of workers if a Republican wins the White House in November.

“Just look at what’s happening,” warned Harvey, Pennsylvania coordinator for the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), referring to the court’s growing and alarming string of anti-worker decisions. “We’re going back in time, back to the way it was when unions were just getting started.”

In one particularly alarming case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court’s six pro-corporate justices overturned longtime precedent and slashed the authority of federal agencies to interpret laws and make regulations.

This ruling sets the stage for a potential rollback of hard-won regulations safeguarding working people, such as a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule mandating safer staffing levels at nursing homes, the OSHA silica standard that continues to protect Harvey’s former co-workers, and the similar silica standard for miners that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) enacted earlier this year at the urging of the USW and other unions.

Also at risk because of the decision are Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules and recently expanded Department of Labor (DOL) standards extending overtime to millions more workers when they work extra hours.

Kumho Tire herded workers into anti-union brainwashing sessions, fired union supporters, including a mother of seven who was eight months pregnant, and plastered the plant with anti-labor literature during the workers’ drive to join the United Steelworkers (USW) several years ago.

“They even had caps that said ‘Vote No,’” recalled Christopher Burks, who helped to lead the organizing effort. “The managers wore them, and they tried to hand them out to the hourly workers.”

Kumho broke so many laws during the desperate scorched-earth campaign at its Macon, Ga., plant that an administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took the extraordinary step of ordering the company to call workers together and read a statement admitting its egregious wrongdoing.

The workers ultimately stood up to Kumho, stayed the course and joined the union. But without the NLRB to hold the company to account, “we wouldn’t have won,” said Burks, who now serves his co-workers as president of USW Local 09-008.

Future victories like that are in jeopardy right now as right-wing extremists plot to regain control of the White House, gut Americans’ labor rights and subjugate workers to greedy corporations.

These fanatics coined a catchphrase for their attack on working families: Project 2025.

They’re scheming to replace Joe Biden, the most pro-worker president in history, with a Republican eager to neuter the NLRB, cripple similar agencies and roll back the gains workers continue making in Biden’s booming post-pandemic economy.

Biden not only empowered the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to better serve workers but created a White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment to give more Americans a pathway to the middle class.

But right-wingers view labor rights and safety regulations as so many impediments to corporate profits and control. So the cabal behind Project 2025 contrived a solution.