President Joe Biden is courting unions as a cornerstone of the country's economic future with a speech at a Philadelphia shipyard on Thursday — just as some major unions are weighing strikes that could disrupt the growth he wants to campaign on in 2024.
Tensions are rising between unions and companies about a rapidly evolving economy in which artificial intelligence, clean energy and e-commerce are rewriting some of the basic rules of work. Biden is trying to allay those concerns by saying unions should be part of that future. But the Democratic president also knows from past experience that a strike could harm his reelection chances.
