On Labor Day 2024, President Biden emphasized that the middle class, not Wall Street, built America, with unions playing a crucial role in building the middle class. He announced a significant Executive Order on Investing in America and American Workers, designed to promote high-quality jobs with strong labor standards. This order includes provisions for fair wages, workplace safety, and union support, and will be overseen by a new Investing in Good Jobs Task Force. The Executive Order builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to creating good jobs through historic investments in clean energy and infrastructure, contributing to nearly 16 million jobs created since the President took office.
White House. Today, President Biden will travel to Michigan to sign a landmark Executive Order on Investing in America and Investing in American Workers (“Good Jobs EO”), which will help ensure that the Biden-Harris Investing in America agenda continues to promote good, high-quality jobs with paths to the middle class. The Good Jobs EO promotes strong labor standards such as family-sustaining wages, workplace safety, and the free and fair opportunity to join a union, and encourages agencies to implement these standards through their Investing in America programs. President Biden will sign the Good Jobs EO during a visit to UA Local 190’s Job Training Center, where he will meet with union workers and apprentices who have benefitted from the President’s agenda. The event is part of a broader tour to profile the workers and communities across America who are reaping the rewards of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda.
The Biden-Harris Administration is the most pro-union administration in American history. The President and Vice President’s Investing in America agenda—including the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act—have already created hundreds of thousands of jobs, and the President and Vice President have been clear that their Administration will use every tool at their disposal to ensure these jobs are good-paying jobs with the free and fair chance to join a union.
The President’s Good Jobs EO calls on agencies to adopt a series of high-road labor standards that have long been recognized to lead to both better jobs and on-time, high-quality delivery of federally funded projects. With this Executive Order, the Biden-Harris Administration is the first in history to specify a clear list of labor standards that all Federal agencies should look to prioritize.
By mobilizing once-in-a-generation public- and private-sector investments, the Biden-Harris Investing in America agenda is transforming our economy—onshoring manufacturing, modernizing our nation’s infrastructure, and building a clean energy economy. The United States has created nearly 16 million jobs since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office, with the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years. Already, their Investing in America agenda has catalyzed over $900 billion in private-sector investment in clean energy and manufacturing. Last year, clean energy jobs grew at double the rate of job growth in the rest of the economy and clean energy unionization rates reached the highest level in history. The Good Jobs EO builds on that momentum and will ensure that these investments continue to improve opportunities for millions of Americans.
The Good Jobs EO calls on agencies to adopt the following labor standards:
- Promoting worker voice, through Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), Community Benefits Agreements, voluntary union recognition, and neutrality with respect to union organizing. These instruments, which agencies are encouraged to prioritize where appropriate and consistent with law, mark the strongest package of priorities that any Administration has taken to help promote the free and fair choice to join a union through federally funded and federally supported projects.
- Providing tools to promote high-wage jobs, through prevailing wage standards and other equitable compensation practices, such as prioritizing equal pay and pay transparency. This Administration is taking ground-breaking steps to raise wages by directing agencies to consider incentivizing specific high-wage standards for manufacturing grants—going beyond long-standing Davis-Bacon requirements that only apply to construction jobs.
- Promoting worker economic security, by directing agencies to consider prioritizing projects that supply the benefits that workers need—including child and dependent care to health insurance, paid leave, and retirement benefits.
- Supporting workforce development through registered apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, labor-management partnerships, and partnerships with training organizations including community colleges, public workforce boards, and the American Climate Corps.
- Leveling the playing field, by encouraging grantees to develop equitable workforce plans and offering project supports that promote fair hiring and management practices as the projects develop.
- Supporting workplace safety by encouraging agencies to prioritize reporting structures that help ensure compliance with all workplace health and safety laws.
To oversee agencies in their implementation of these labor standards, the Good Jobs EO creates a new Investing in Good Jobs Task Force (Task Force) in the Executive Office of the President. The Task Force will coordinate policy development that drives the creation of high-quality jobs and ensures project delivery. The Task Force will be co-chaired by the Secretary of Labor and the Director of the National Economic Council and include Seniors Advisors to the President and members of the President’s Cabinet.
In addition, the Good Jobs EO outlines strategies for agencies to enact these standards across their grant programs, consistent with applicable law:
- Incentivize these strong labor standards to the greatest extent possible by including application evaluation criteria related to strong labor standards. This includes, consistent with relevant statutes, prioritizing applicants who employ Project Labor Agreements and Community Benefit Agreements in funding opportunities.
- Issue guidance or best practices to promote and implement these priorities.
- Collect data on job quality to further encourage best practices and increase accountability. This includes embedding checkboxes on high-road labor standards into grant applications—a proven strategy that has yielded 22 PLA commitments and 34 new registered apprenticeship programs during a pilot study at the Department of Transportation.
- Conduct pre-award negotiations for key programs and projects as appropriate, and include ensuing commitments in grant agreements.
- Develop staff expertise to ensure every agency has in-house knowledge of strong labor standards and how their investments can promote and support good jobs.
Today’s actions build on many previous Biden-Harris Administration actions to support good jobs, including union jobs, such as:
- Launched the first-ever White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, chaired by Vice President Harris, which resulted in over 70 actions to promote worker organizing and collective bargaining for federal employees and workers employed by public- and private-sector employers.
- Created the Made in America office, to ensure that American-made construction materials are used on infrastructure projects.
- Published a final rule from the Department of Treasury implementing prevailing wage and apprenticeship bonus credits for clean energy projects funded by the President’s Inflation Reduction Act to ensure clean energy workers are paid good wages and that these projects create equitable pipelines to these good jobs.
- Implemented a new rule to require Project Labor Agreements on nearly all major federal construction projects of over $35 million, so federal construction projects will be delivered on time and on budget with good wages and well-trained workers.
- Signed the Butch Lewis Act as part of the American Rescue Plan to save the pensions of more than one million hard-working union workers and retirees.
- Designated nine Workforce Hubs across the country to ensure we have the skilled, diverse workforce needed to carry out this Administration’s historic investments.
- Published a new rule restoring and extending overtime pay protections to millions of workers.
- Published the first update to Davis-Bacon prevailing wages in nearly 40 years, which will increase pay for one million construction workers over time.
- Proposed a new rule from the Department of Labor that would protect 36 million indoor and outdoor workers from extreme heat on the job.
- Signed a Registered Apprenticeship Executive Order to bolster apprenticeships in the federal workforce. Since then, federal agencies including the Departments Agriculture, Defense, Education Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, and Treasury, and the Architect of the Capitol and U.S. Agency for Global Media have identified potential opportunities for developing new and scaling existing registered apprenticeships to create pathways to good jobs, including in mission-critical occupations.
- Through the CHIPS Act, provided $200 million in dedicated CHIPS funding for training and workforce development to ensure local communities have access to the jobs of the future in upcoming projects and introduced a requirement that companies receiving grants under the CHIPS Act over $150 million create a plan to ensure access to quality, affordable child care for their employees.
- Invested nearly $730 million in Registered Apprenticeships, leading to more than 1 million registered apprentices receiving earn-as-you-learn training for in-demand jobs.
- Vocally supported unions, including becoming the first sitting President to walk a picket line.
- The NLRB expanded remedies available to workers when their employers engage in unionbusting, to now include all direct and foreseeable pecuniary harm, such as financial loss from credit card debt, medical bills, or missed rent payments.
- The NLRB overhauled the process for union representation elections by requiring an employer to bargain if it commits an unfair labor practice during the election process, and by reducing unnecessary delays before workers can vote.
September 6 2024 White House. Briefing Room. Washington, DC USA
Sources: Midtown Tribune news, WH.gov
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