Detroit, MI
May 6, 2024
For President Biden, Vice President Harris, and our entire administration, "Made in America" is not a slogan. It's an economic strategy. And "Made in America" means made by America's workers.
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We've seen this right here in Detroit. We've seen it in Michigan. We've seen it with the autoworkers. Last year, through their strength and solidarity, the United Auto Workers not only reached a historic contract, with 25 percent wage increases and improvements to health and retirement benefits, but also showed what it's like when workers have a real seat at the table.
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And when workers help to define the future of an industry.
They show that made in America is a strategy that benefits both American workers and American businesses, ensures that we can protect our climate while growing good union jobs. And we are here today to support a long-time iconic American industry and set us up to lead in the future by making sure we have a resilient and strong supply chain that includes small and medium-sized businesses and where workers who make profits possible share in the prosperity.
So President Biden's "Investing in America" is about infrastructure. It's about roads and bridges; it's about modernizing airports; it's about manufacturing electric vehicle batteries. Our workforce system is also a form of infrastructure. It's the roads and bridges that connect people to the good jobs they want and need and employers to the people they want and need.
But that infrastructure has some challenges, too. It's got some cracks. It's got some potholes. It doesn't reach every single community the way that it should. Too often, people hear workforce development and they just think about training. No. Black workers and other workers have been left out not because they lack the skills, but because we have not built the roads and bridges that connect all communities to the good jobs that we are creating.
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We have to create a situation where economic opportunity is broadly shared. And so we are going to fix that this time. We're going to do it right this time.
In President Biden's and Vice President Harris' America, we are building a workforce infrastructure that connects all communities, that is the bridge from poverty to prosperity and from racial exclusion to real equity.
And that's why we have named Detroit a workforce hub. And so Secretary Granholm and I look forward to working with all of you, with the employers in this room, with community-based organizations that serve communities, including Black-led organizations, with educational institutions, with unions, and with local leaders to connect people to the good jobs that are being created right here.
We also have to make sure that all jobs, including battery-manufacturing jobs, are safe jobs. Because while we expand our capability in new ways so America can lead our clean energy future, we have to make sure that we don't revert to old conditions in workplaces in which workers have to sacrifice their limbs, their lungs, or even their lives when they go to work.
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All workers have to come home safe and healthy at the end of the day.
So this is a historic time, as you've already heard, for manufacturing in America. This community knows what it looks like when we make things here, the pride, the economic security, the ways that good jobs lift up all communities. But you also know what it's like when those things leave. The insecurity, the precarity, the fear.
Not this time. Not on our watch.
[Applause]
We're going to do it right. We're going to do right by America's workers. And we look forward to doing it with you all together. Thank you.
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