Dive Brief:
- North America’s Building Trades Unions has endorsed Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, the organization announced during its annual legislative conference Wednesday. The group also backed the president in 2020.
- NABTU President Sean McGarvey heaped praise on Biden, largely pointing to his efforts that have bolstered construction in the U.S., including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs, the Chips and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
- “Joe Biden has proven to be the perfect leader at the perfect time for this country and the working men and women who have built it,” said McGarvey. “NABTU is proud to endorse the clear and only choice for president of the United States, Joe Biden.”
Dive Insight:
Following the endorsement, Biden attended the NABTU legislative conference Wednesday, where he addressed members and leadership, and said he was proud to be “the most pro-union president in American history.”
“I’ve always known that Wall Street didn’t build America,” Biden said “The middle class built America, and unions built the middle class.”
The endorsement is one of the earliest ever for NABTU, per CNN. The group is an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the construction industry, collectively representing over 3 million tradesworkers in the U.S. and Canada.
At the conference, McGarvey praised Biden for his labor-friendly policies, including reverting Davis-Bacon interpretations and requiring project labor agreements on federal projects.
“Not in my lifetime have we had a president prioritize the value of America's skilled workers and the work that they do,” McGarvey said. “Mark my word the policies today that Biden and his administration and our friends in Congress helped us secure and that our local state governments helping us implement are the bedrock upon which we will build a more prosperous and equitable future.”
Both Biden and McGarvey, in their respective speeches, lambasted former President Donald Trump, saying he didn’t keep promises to look out for working-class people, nor invest in infrastructure.
Trump himself campaigned with construction workers Thursday morning, visiting a Manhattan jobsite, where he posed for photographs, shook hands and distributed documentation decrying Biden’s economic policies, the New York Post reported.
The paper quoted Darren Gould, 58, a general foreman carpenter from Wanaque, New Jersey, as a union Trump supporter.
“They say unions aren’t big for Trump — well they are,” Gould told the paper. “Maybe the top union brass aren’t but when you talk to the men on the construction site, they’re all about Trump.”
