This is a first - an industry asking for strings to be attached.  It's like the banks asking to be required to loan the bailout money they receive. 

From the New York Times:

"What we are asking," said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and chief executive of the Nucor Corporation, a giant steel maker, "is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a 'buy America' clause."

Nucor's 'buy America' proposal is critical to making certain we get the most bang for every buck spent on recovery programs.   Along with jobs on the road gangs (or rail gangs), we'll have jobs in mills forging the I-beams and rebar used to rebuild highways, bridges and railroads, jobs in the stores where mill workers spend their paychecks on clothes, cleaners, food and household goods,  and fewer foreclsoures in the towns where all those people live.

Something else to consider... The recovery package may include spending to weatherize Snow Belt homes.  Obviously, this will create jobs for tradespeople, as this NY Times article explains.

Weatherizing a million homes annually would also create about 78,000 jobs for a year, according to the federal Energy Department's weatherization project director, Gil Sperling.

The current 140,000 annual total creates about 8,000 jobs, Mr. Sperling said.

Although that is a tiny fraction of the five million green-collar jobs that Mr. Obama promised in the campaign, "it's a decent number of jobs per dollar spent," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington. "The work is productive, and the jobs are at a mix of skill levels."

Weatherization typically involves insulating heating ducts and water heaters.   Contractors should be required to use domestically manufactured insulation materials as a precondition for receiving federal funds.
 
Buy America helps boost domestic employment, domestic manufacturing capacity, and increases the velocity of money circulating in local economies, multiplying its benefits.