WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday will meet in Belvidere, Illinois, with the top of the United Auto Workers union, and the 2 leaders are anticipated to spotlight plans to reopen an auto manufacturing facility that Stellantis wished to shut.
The White Home introduced in a press release Tuesday afternoon that throughout the go to, Biden will ship remarks and meet with UAW members and the union’s president, Shawn Fain.
The occasion shall be a chance for the president and Fain to publicly showcase tentative contract agreements that ended a virtually 45-day union strike that focused General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, maker of Jeep, Dodge and Ram automobiles.
Biden will “spotlight his dedication to delivering for working households and creating good-paying union jobs, in addition to the UAW’s historic settlement that features bringing hundreds of UAW jobs again to Belvidere and reopening a plant,” the White Home stated.
The contracts, if accepted by 146,000 union members within the coming weeks, would dramatically elevate pay for auto staff. Within the cope with Stellantis, the union was capable of save the idled factory in Belvidere, a small metropolis of 25,000 on the northern fringe of the state.
Biden made it a mission to domesticate a personal relationship with Fain, inviting him to a personal Oval Workplace assembly on July 19 and calling him final week to want him a contented fifty fifth birthday. The UAW has but to endorse Biden as members have but to completely approve the contracts, making the union one of many main holdouts as different labor organizations have backed the Democratic president.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker may even attend Thursday’s assembly, the White Home stated.
Beneath the cope with the UAW, Stellantis agreed to construct a brand new gas-powered midsize pickup truck in Belvidere, plus open a brand new electric vehicle battery plant within the metropolis. About 1,200 staff shall be introduced again to the idled plant and one other 1,300 shall be added on the battery manufacturing facility.
