Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg highlighting Midwest job growth in central Indiana

KOKOMO, Ind. -- The former South Bend Mayor and current Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, spent the last two days in Wisconsin and Michigan. Today, he made his way to his home state Indiana, on a Midwest tour highlighting the rise in clean energy jobs, including the future electric vehicle battery plants coming to Kokomo.

" This is what America's manufacturing hub looks like," stated Buttigieg.

Secretary Buttigieg says some call them green collar jobs, but to him they are just good old-fashioned blue-collar positions.

1,400 of them coming to central Indiana, at two Kokomo battery plants, John Hollingsworth tells us he was able to find work at the Stellantis Plant Project with Houston Electric, months before the multi-billion-dollar facility is up and running. 

"This is a huge project right in my backyard," stated Hollingsworth.

He said it has been a tremendous opportunity for local contractors like him and led his union to more than double its membership.

Hollingsworth continues, "Most the time you have to travel a good distance to get on a large project like this with all the overtime so it's you know the income is incredible basically so this is just you know kind of unicorn".

Buttigieg says the creation of these clean energy manufacturing jobs at 400 facilities across the country, has been a highlight for the Biden- Harris Administration.

After touring the facility, he spoke at Ivy Tech's Kokomo Campus, which as been a partner in training skilled workers needed for the plant.

"So, I couldn't be more excited about the place we are in the turn around that Howard County has seen. The future that is in front of us, and the innovation yet to come, because we are still very early in the days of the electric vehicle that will dominate the automotive sector for the balance of this century.," stated Buttigieg. 

Secretary Buttigieg would not take any question on the future of his political career, or on the speculation that Vice President Kamala Harris may select him as her running mate.