ANN ARBOR, Michigan (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday for federal grants that prioritizes projects with labor contracts, wage standards and benefits such as access to child care and training programs.
Biden said the ideas in his order were “common sense.”
“Economists have long believed that these good labor standards create more opportunity, better outcomes for workers and more predictable results for businesses,” he said at a union training center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he made the announcement. “A good union job creates a future worthy of your dreams.”
The Biden administration is trying to argue that economic growth should result from better conditions for workers. His administration has emphasized the crucial role that unions are likely to play for Democrats in the November election. In her duel against Republican Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris will rely on the support of the AFL-CIO and other unions to mobilize voters in key states.
Biden prides himself on his support of unions and participated in picketing striking union members in Michigan last year. As he took the stage on Friday, people chanted “Thank you, Joe!”
Trump has also tried to gain traction with unions by having Teamsters Chairman Sean O’Brien speak at the Republican National Convention. The Teamsters have not yet officially endorsed a candidate, but Harris is expected to meet with them.
Biden said that under his administration, “we are buying American products. And we are making sure that federal projects are ‘made in America’ projects.”
Some critics in the construction industry say the order could potentially augment construction costs and exclude non-union workers from projects.
“This policy directs taxpayer-funded infrastructure contracts to unionized companies and creates jobs exclusively for union members at the expense of everyone else and the rule of law,” said Ben Brubeck, an executive at Associated Builders and Contractors, a construction industry trade group.
The regulation aims to set up a working group to coordinate policy development and provide more benefits to workers. Government funding for infrastructure, computer chip manufacturing and the development of renewable energy sources has led to a wave of projects.
According to the administration, its incentives have sparked $900 billion in private investment in renewable energy and manufacturing. Those pledges have not yet resonated much with voters, who are more focused on the ongoing damage caused by the rise in inflation in 2022, but many projects will take several years to bear fruit.
Although he was not in Michigan for a campaign rally, Biden spoke out about his predecessor, saying that Trump would much rather “break a picket line than join it.”
“My predecessor believed America was a failing nation,” Biden said, citing an oft-repeated complaint the president made about a 2020 report that said Trump had called American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 “losers” and “suckers.”
Trump has rejected the report.
“I’m glad I wasn’t there,” Biden said. “I think I would have done something. I think you would have done that, too.”
Biden added: “He’s the sucker. He’s the loser.”
Biden’s overdue son Beau died of cancer in 2015. The president blamed the brain tumor on burn pits. Burn pits were used to dispose of chemicals, tires, plastics, medical equipment and human waste on military bases and used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’m sorry to get so emotional. But I miss him,” Biden said before turning his attention back to the union workers, calling them heroes.
___
Boak reported from Pittsburgh.
