Friday, May 14, 2021
Last month, President Biden introduced the American Jobs Plan. This is an ambitious multi Trillion-dollar plan to rebuild the Country's infrastructure and put Americans to work. Biden has been traveling across the country to sell the plan.
On Tuesday, the IBEW met with White House staff to discuss the American Jobs Plan. The virtual meeting included IBEW President Lonnie Stephenson, senior White House staff like Cedric Richmond who is the White House Director of Public Engagement, and over 950 rank and file IBEW members.
During the meeting, the White House laid out how the American Jobs Plan will help IBEW members. They focused on a few key areas including the build-out of a national electric vehicle charging network. This work is immensely important as major car companies like General Motors are promising to be fully electric in the next decade, but this won't be possible without a national charging network. According to the White House, Biden hopes to build 500,000 charging stations on top of the 100,000 that are already built. These would need to be built and maintained by the IBEW and would provide tens of thousands of jobs over the next decade for the union. This has been a major priority for President Biden who even included it in his joint address to Congress.