“President Joe Biden on Wednesday met with union leaders to get input on his forthcoming infrastructure plan, while nominating a new head of the National Labor Relations Board and rolling back a Trump-era apprenticeship program.
Among those present were several heads of construction-related unions including Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO; Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions; and Lonnie R. Stephenson, the international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who served on Biden’s transition advisory board.
During the meeting, Biden called the union representatives “real friends” and “the folks who brung me to the dance,” according to the White House. Biden outlined the dire need for infrastructure investment across the country, and labor’s role in building it. “I said from the beginning of my campaign, throughout my whole career: The middle class built this country, and labor built the middle class. And I think we have an incredible opportunity to make some enormous progress in creating jobs — good-paying jobs, Davis-Bacon and prevailing wage jobs — to rebuild the infrastructure of this country in a way that everybody knows has to be done.”
– Bousquin, Joe. “Biden Calls Union Reps ‘Real Friends,’ Seeks Their Infrastructure Input.” Construction Dive, Construction Dive, 18 Feb. 2021