Municipality of Scio – President Joe Biden will return to Michigan on Friday, where he will sign an order directing federal agencies to prioritize new labor standards, including voluntary union recognition and worker benefits, when selecting their projects.
The White House outlined the Good Jobs order in a press release Friday morning. Biden will sign it during an afternoon visit to the United Association Local 190 Job Training Center in Washtenaw County.
The new order will direct federal agencies to prioritize projects that provide child and dependent care benefits, health insurance, paid leave and retirement benefits, and encourage compliance with worker-friendly standards “to the greatest extent possible” by including appropriate evaluation criteria for applications, the White House said. The president’s order also directs agencies to consider promoting new labor standards for manufacturing industry grants.
Friday’s event in the Ann Arbor area comes at a time when the country’s economy is coming into greater focus in the presidential election campaign between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“The President’s Good Jobs EO calls on agencies to adopt a set of demanding labor standards that have long been recognized to lead to both better jobs and timely, high-quality delivery of federally funded projects,” the White House statement said Friday morning. “With this Executive Order, the Biden-Harris administration is the first in history to establish a clear list of labor standards that all federal agencies should prioritize.”
In addition, according to the White House, the order represents “the strongest package of measures ever taken by any administration to promote the free and fair decision to join a union through federally funded and supported projects.”
Friday’s stop in Washtenaw County is Biden’s first visit to Michigan since he decided on July 21 to drop his re-election bid and endorse Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, as the Democratic nominee. The Nov. 5 election is 60 days away.
A national poll of 600 likely voters last week commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) showed Trump, the former president, with a narrow lead over Harris in Michigan, 44.7% to 43.5%. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
When asked what the most important issue in the upcoming election was, 19.5 percent of survey respondents said jobs and the economy were the top answer. The third most common answer was inflation and the cost of living, at 12 percent.
Together, these two answers were named as the main topic by around 32 percent of participants. That’s almost one in three. In a similar survey in July, the figure was only 27 percent.
More: How ‘small changes’ could impact a close presidential race in Michigan
In the United States, employers added 142,000 jobs last month, compared with 89,000 in July, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday. At the same time, the country’s unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.3% in July, the highest level in nearly three years.
Victoria LaCivita, spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign in Michigan, said in a statement Friday that Biden’s trip to Michigan was “another sickening reminder to all Michiganders that a Kamala presidency would mean another four years of historic inflation, high prices and job losses from electric vehicles.”
“Despite all of Kamala and Joe’s efforts, Michigan voters know that only President Donald J. Trump offers the common sense solutions that will make Michigan great again,” LaCivita said.
Biden last visited Michigan on July 12 for a campaign rally in Detroit.
