LIVE: Biden Delivers Remarks on Infrastructure

IBEW Local 134 in Chicago, Illinois. Good afternoon and welcome to the White House and the Talent Pipeline Challenge. It's such an honor to be here with you today. My name is Alyssa Cruz and I'm a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 134 in Chicago, Illinois. I'm a fourth-year apprentice and I'm proud to represent the next generation of skilled tradeswomen and men who will power America's future. Although my father, Arturo Cruz, and my five uncles are all Local 134 members, I'm the first female Cruz to join IBEW. As the youngest of three and the only girl, I was not expected to follow in my father's footsteps. I'd gone to college on a scholarship and worked for a few years before I realized I wanted what my dad had. The IBEW income that put me and my brothers through college, a union pension, healthcare, and the satisfaction that comes from seeing an empty lot and then working to build something from the ground up. My father, a foreman, was literally by my side for my first year as an apprentice, guiding me and teaching me. Today, if I ever get stuck and I have a question, he always has the answer. But the IBEW of 2022 looks different from the IBEW of his apprenticeship, and he's not even that old. Today, half of my apprenticeship class are minority or female. I've been trained to install solar panels, offshore wind turbines, and those EV chargers you saw earlier, the new energy technologies that will help meet the urgent climate goals that President Biden was elected to accomplish. Nationwide, the IBEW has more than 12,000 trained electricians powering this electric vehicle network, and we are adding more every day. In 2020, Joe Biden promised to rebuild a middle class and to honor the dignity of all workers. He promised union workers and their communities he'd restore infrastructure from roads and bridges to clean water and broadband. He promised to bring back American manufacturing so we could get back to building and making things in this country. Now, just 23 months later, here we are in the White House, infrastructure, manufacturing, union jobs, promises made, promises kept. Because of all these projects come with some of the strongest worker protections we've ever seen, because President Biden knows that we don't just need more jobs, this country needs more middle class union jobs. I'm so proud to be part of the army of skilled union workers, union workers who look like me, that is rebuilding the United States of the future, reaching out to put the best of us to work for the best of our country. And we are more than ready to meet those goals. This Talent Pipeline Challenge is only the beginning for me, for my union, for our country. There's literally nothing we can't do. Mr. President, we're ready to work. On behalf of my family and my union, I am honored to introduce the greatest champion of American workers we've ever had in the White House, the 46th President of the United States, President Joe Biden. Please. I think you can do anything. That was impressive. And before I begin, I want to remind some folks here that, you know, when I started to run for the presidency this time, the suggestion was Biden was too green. He'd never get unions to stick with him. One of the first guys I called was Lonnie. And before I announced the detail of all my program, we sat down for hours, hours, more than one day. And Lonnie became – was convinced, not by me, but convinced by circumstance, that the future of labor was in the future, was about what we have to do to deal with climate, with advanced manufacturing, that we have to do to deal with things like those little computer chips that, in fact, mobilize everything we do, from your washing machine to your automobile to our weapons systems. It's amazing. And Lonnie jumped on. And a lot of you had already come along. A lot of the unions had come along. But everybody came along. Because, finally, we've reached the point, with the help of the IBW and the Carpenters – so many others, so many others – that, you know, the future is about the future. One of the reasons I want to make it clear that I talk about unions all the time is this young woman has been in an apprentice program for four years. She's already gone to college. Four years. People think that you just walk in and say, I want to be an electrician, and you get a – you get a job, you get hired, and you're at work in a couple days. This – we have the best-trained workers in the world – in the world. And that's not hyperbole. And I mean this, and I think American businesses are coming to understand this, and American industry, is that, you know, it costs more to hire a union worker than a nonunion worker. But guess what? It costs you less over time because you have the best product from what you're paying for. And so, anyway, I just want to thank you, Lonnie, and all the union presidents that are here for stepping up. It wasn't easy to step up as boldly as you. I really mean it. I've always had support of the IBW, but never on this – never so aggressively on dealing with the things we're talking about. There are three major, major pieces of legislation that already created 700,000 manufacturing jobs and are going to create literally several million more. And that is the infrastructure bill, which is – in fact, do everything from highways and bridges to broadband to clean water, lead – I mean, across the board. And then we came along with a little thing that everybody wondered what it was. We talked about the Chips and Science Act. Well, guess what? We have American and non-American businesses investing literally several trillion – I mean, billion – hundreds of billions of dollars because it's the future. Every single thing that your kids, when they're your age, are buying is going to require a computer chip. We invented them. We invented them. We're the ones who advanced them. The United States of America, yet we lost the market because we didn't invest. We didn't invest in America. We came along, and with the help of all of you in this room, we got – we got strong support, and we invested. And all the way from – I was just up at IBM up in – upstate New York, and then I went to – over to Syracuse, New York. We talked – just those two outfits are several hundred billion dollars over time. So, look, this is – I am – Lonnie's heard me say this. I am optimistic. I'm truly optimistic because of your generation. You know, speaking of labor, it's always been great to work with you all. And last year, we signed the historic infrastructure law, a once-in-a-generation investment in roads, bridges, railroads, airports, high-speed Internet, clean air, clean water, clean energy future. I signed that. I signed that so that the – that we could be positioned to win the competition of the second quarter of the 21st century. To do that, we had to make sure the law would rebuild all of America, lift us all up, workers and – in the process of this, with products that are made in America. And guess what? We didn't stop there. As I said, we passed the Chips and Science Act. The result? Companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of jobs. And, by the way, you know what these jobs are going to be? And, for example, the ones down in – for Intel, when they get these factories built, or up – I'm going to leave somebody out, so I won't name them all. But, you know, non-college – without a college degree, $120,000 a year. $120,000 a year. In August, we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, investing $360 billion in clean energy. There will be more to come, I believe. We put America to work making solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars. By the way, I was – I was in part of Ohio looking at the – at the facilities where they're training people on wind turbines. You know, we have the blaze wind turbines now that are 102 – 104 yards long. Longer than a football field. Not a joke. Not a joke. Wind energy, solar energy is cheaper than oil and gas and coal. Cheaper. Look, we're – you know, we've already created, as I said, 700,000 new manufacturing jobs. That's what today is about. Back in June, we launched the Nationwide Talent Pipeline Challenge. And I tell you, it was designed to ensure that workers across the country, especially those in historically underrepresented in infrastructure jobs, could take advantage of job growth in three sectors that we're going to – booming because what we're going to do because of the infrastructure law. High-speed internet, construction, electrification of all those new electric vehicles and batteries, improvements to the electric grid. Infrastructure law is going to provide $800 billion in workforce development. Then we went out and asked employers and unions to get in the deal. Educational institutions, state and local, tribal and territorial governments, and philanthropic organizations to join us to make tangible commitments to build the 21st century workforce. Commitments to prepare women, people of color, underserved populations, good-paying, high-quality jobs in those three sectors. Today, I'm proud to announce that more than 350 organizations across the country – nearly 50 states and territories – have responded to my call and committed to the challenge. Companies – many of you are here – are forging partnerships with unions, community colleges, local nonprofits to create apprenticeships that train workers to develop the necessary skills. It's the first time we have high-paying jobs and not enough people to do them. It's a nice thing, isn't it? It's a nice problem to have. We're solving it quickly. Employers are providing support services like help with child care and transportation so workers and kids and elderly parents at home don't have to choose between taking care of their families and completing their training or taking a better-paying job. Colleges are creating new infrastructure academies and preparing – partnering with companies to expand apprentice and pre-apprentice programs to match the trainees with mentors to provide on-the-job experience. You know, a lot of community colleges – particularly, my wife says community colleges are the best kept secret in America. I wonder why she says that. She's still teaching. But my point is that, you know, what happened was, what do you need in the community? Go to the community college, tell them, they'll set up a training program with you. It's a little more complicated, but that's the essence of it. And philanthropies are now providing more than $70 million in new commitments so far to recruit talent in underrepresented communities. I made a commitment we're not going to leave anybody behind, and I really mean it. Many of the organizations that are here with us today, Communication Workers of America, are partnering with AT&T and Corning to create training programs for broadband technicians. United Airlines and the Teamsters announced a new apprenticeship for airline mechanics. The Center for Energy Workforce Development and Urban League are working with the IABW right now to train thousands of workers to build and maintain charging infrastructure and electric vehicles all across the country. And by the way, in your home, you know, the batteries that we have now, and they're getting more and more sophisticated. You know, a lightning storm takes out all the electricity in the house. Guess what? You can plug your car into the house and make it light up. You think I'm joking. It's a little simplistic, but literally, you can. Literally, you can. Oh, this summer, it really is kind of exciting. I get it. This summer. Jill, my wife, joined the Labor Secretary Marty Walsh at an electrical substation in Boston, where Bunker Hill Community College students had paid internships at a public utility company, preparing them for union jobs that support American electric grid infrastructure. That's happening now. You know, we just did a walkthrough of several union-led demonstrations in the dining room. We had a bricklayer. He didn't want the cement to get in the salads, but, you know, it may happen. He was good, though. It didn't drop in. Anyway, all kidding aside, the trainings that these organizations provide are truly state-of-the-art. I saw workers are trained both in person and virtually through virtual reality tools to create brick and mortar structures, walls, dams, buildings, weld materials for roads, bridges, airports, and to wire electrical boxes for electric vehicle charging stations. It matters. But it also provides really good-paying jobs where America will lead the world again in manufacturing. I don't know where it's written that we can't be the manufacturing capital of the world again. Look, for most of the 20th century, America led the world because we invested in ourselves. But somewhere along the way – not a joke – somewhere along the way, we stopped investing in ourselves. Jobs are going overseas. Now we're sending products overseas, not jobs. It's true. Because our adversaries have been closing the gap. Well, this talent pipeline challenge, these partnerships, we're regaining the momentum and taking back our competitive edge. And the United States is going to win. In addition to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest investment ever in climate – ever, ever, ever in the history of the world in climate – creating jobs of the future. So workers and small businesses lead the transition to a clean energy economy, something we owe our children and grandchildren beyond measure. The Chips and Science Act is supercharged efforts to make semiconductors and small computer chips that power our everyday lives and every aspect of life. That's going to grow and grow and grow. And we're doing it the right way, centered around workers and communities, bringing everybody along. You know, it's part of the economic vision I ran on, and I've been carrying it out as soon as I came to office with the help of the people in this room, rebuilding our economy from the bottom up and the middle out. I'm so sick and tired of trickle-down economics. I don't remember my dad ever feeling that trickle on his head. But seriously – and by the way, businesses are coming along. One of the things that's happening is that, you know, when you have – when the middle class grows and it's growing, and the poor have a ladder up, and the wealthy still do very, very well, no one gets hurt. No one gets hurt. The economy that creates good-paying jobs, union jobs, high-quality jobs that don't require college degrees – the economy that works for everybody. Through bold actions like this one, we're taking that vision to reality. This is what it looks like when America comes together to get something done. So let me close with this, because I don't want to get started, because I'm really excited about all this. The country's been through a tough four or five years, and folks are still hurting. Granted that we inherit a 6.5 percent unemployment rate, it's down to 3.5 percent, but guess what? Inflation is still hurting people. But we're making real progress. We're reasserting ourselves as a nation. That's why I want to look at – out at everyone here and across the country. I've been more optimistic about the future than I ever have been. Ever in my career, I've been more optimistic than today. We just have to remember who we are. We're the United States of America. There's – and I mean this sincerely, from the bottom of our – there's nothing, nothing we cannot do – nothing – when we do it together. So that's my goal, to bring us together to get more done. And I look in this room, there's business, labor, apprentices, a lot of good folks, all understanding that we can out-compete the rest of the world like we always did in the past. There's nothing beyond our capacity. Nothing, nothing, nothing. God bless you all. And may God protect our troops. Thank you. Thank you very much.