The holiday weekend may be starting with Veterans Day, but the Biden administration on Thursday was celebrating like it was Labor Day.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both visited with allies from organized labor Thursday as unions in other industries, including actors and casino workers, were announcing contract victories.
“I’ve been around the UAW longer than you’ve been alive, man,” Biden said to the crowd after trading his jacket for a red United Auto Workers T-shirt and recalling the union’s longtime support for his political career in Delaware.
Biden, who had previously joined striking members of the UAW on a picket line in Michigan, met with the union’s president, Shawn Fain, and other autoworkers in Boone County, Ill., on Thursday. The union in late October reached tentative agreements with the big three automakers; they are currently in the ratification process.
“That day in Michigan, I said the auto strike was about a simple proposition. You guys sacrificed to save the automobile industry” amid the 2008 financial crisis, Biden said. “And now the auto companies were doing incredibly well, so autoworkers should be doing incredibly well as well.”
Biden’s remarks were briefly interrupted by a woman protesting, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The woman was quickly escorted away from the room where the president was speaking.
Matt Frantzen, the president of UAW Local 1268 who introduced the president and presented him with the T-shirt, recalled meeting with Biden in Chicago and getting a chance to talk about the local plant closure. He also praised Fain and the strike strategy that disrupted operations selectively in a way the automakers often could not anticipate.
“It was a movement that went across the country,” Frantzen said. “It inspired so many people. It inspired the man I get to introduce because he came out. He came out and stood with the picketers.”
Earlier in the day, Harris traveled to Boston for a moderated event hosted by Pipefitters Local 537 on the administration’s support for apprenticeships, the latest of a number of appearances by the vice president in union halls and with workers.
“I believe in the dignity of work and the importance of workers receiving through wages and benefits the recognition of what they do. And so, the work that I have done throughout my career has been side by side with labor, recognizing the importance of the labor movement,” the vice president said.
Ahead of the president’s trip, a White House official said the visit to Illinois to mark the reopening of a Stellantis facility underscored the president’s agenda and support for unions.
“The reopening is a key result of the historic contract between the UAW and the Big Three — and it is the latest example of the President’s economic agenda facilitating wins for workers and communities across the country,” the official said in a statement. “The reopening also reflects the President’s vision of companies retooling, rehiring, and reinvesting in the same communities when technological transitions are required.”
Harris took time at her event to highlight other union contract victories that were being announced elsewhere in the country this week, including SAG-AFTRA reaching a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas, with the Bartenders Union Local 165, doing likewise with Caesar’s Entertainment and MGM Resorts International.
Culinary Local 226 Secretary-Teasurer Ted Pappageorge said in a statement that with the proposed new contract with MGM, which came less than 24 hours before a union strike deadline, “Workers have secured significant raises every year for the next five years, preserved our great union health insurance, union pension, and comprehensive union benefits, while gaining historic improvements in housekeeping workload reductions, substantial improvements for workers regarding safety at work, the ability to have a say in how technology impacts our work, and ensuring the union and members can support non-union hospitality workers who seek to join our union.”
Harris met with Culinary Union members during a visit to southern Nevada last month as workers were preparing for the possibility of a strike, and Biden commented on the SAG-AFTRA agreement Thursday morning.
“When both sides come to the table to negotiate in earnest they can make businesses stronger and allow workers to secure pay and benefits that help them raise families and retire with dignity. Over the last three years, workers have won historic victories that ensure record pay, record benefits, and an economy that grows from the middle out and bottom up,” Biden said in a statement ahead of his trip to Illinois. “SAG-AFTRA members will have the final say on this contract, but the sacrifices they’ve made will ensure a better future for them, their families, and all workers who deserve a fair share of the value they helped create.”
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