Biden to sign union-focused executive order in Michigan on Friday

Municipality of Scio — President Joe Biden will return to Michigan on Friday, where he will sign an order directing federal agencies to prioritize new labor standards when selecting projects, including voluntary union recognition and employee benefits.

The White House detailed the Good Jobs order in a press release Friday morning. Biden will sign it during an afternoon visit to the United Association Local 190 Job Training Center in Washtenaw County.

The new order will direct federal agencies to consider prioritizing projects that provide child and dependent care, health insurance, paid leave and retirement benefits, and to encourage pro-worker standards “to the greatest extent possible” by including criteria for evaluating applications on them, according to the White House. The president’s order also directs agencies to consider encouraging new labor standards for production grants.

Friday’s event in the Ann Arbor area comes as the nation’s economy becomes an increasingly important consideration in the presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The President’s Good Jobs Executive Order calls on agencies to adopt a series of high-level work standards that have long been recognized as leading to both better jobs and timely, high-quality completion of federally funded projects,” the White House said in a statement Friday morning. “With this executive order, the Biden-Harris Administration is the first in history to set forth a clear list of work standards that all federal agencies should prioritize.”

Likewise, the order, according to the White House, marks “the strongest package of priorities any Administration has undertaken to help promote a free and fair choice to join a union through federally funded and supported projects.”

The stop in Washtenaw County on Friday is Biden’s first visit to Michigan since he decided on July 21 to drop his reelection bid and endorse Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, as the Democratic candidate. The Nov. 5 election is 60 days away.

A statewide poll of 600 likely voters commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) last week showed Trump, the former president, with a narrow lead over Harris in Michigan, 44.7% to 43.5%. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

When asked what the most important issue in the upcoming election was, 19.5% of survey participants said jobs and the economy, making them the most common answer. The third most common answer was inflation and the cost of living at 12%.

Together, these two responses were cited as a key theme by around 32% of participants, or almost one in three, compared with 27% in a similar survey conducted in July.

More: How ‘small changes’ could affect the outcome of Michigan’s tight presidential race

U.S. employers added 142,000 jobs last month, up from 89,000 in July, the federal Labor Department reported Friday. Meanwhile, the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.3% in July, the highest level in nearly three years.

Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign in Michigan, said in a statement Friday that Biden’s trip to Michigan “is another sickening reminder to every Michigander that a Kamala presidency would mean four more years of historic inflation, high prices, and job losses to electric vehicles.”

“Despite Kamala and Joe’s best efforts, Michigan voters know that only President Donald J. Trump has the common-sense solutions to make Michigan great again,” LaCivita said.

Biden most recently visited Michigan, attending a campaign rally in Detroit on July 12.

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