Introduction and summary
The Biden-Harris administration’s industrial investments mark a turning point for economic policy that can help the United States regain competitiveness in several emerging sectors and create jobs across the economy. These investments include creating hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs that, at their best, provide routes to the middle class and offer a new generation of American workers decent wages and benefits and the freedom to unionize. Unlike in federally supported construction work, however, the government had little experience in supporting job quality incentives in the manufacturing sector prior to the enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Awarding agencies have had to learn how to incentivize job quality in the three years since the enactment of the first of these laws. While the government has made significant progress in encouraging a job quality race to the top in the sector, federal agencies and pro-worker lawmakers can do more to ensure manufacturing jobs created with government support offer good wages and the chance to join a union and are accessible to workers from all walks of life.
The IIJA, CHIPS, and IRA build out the country’s competitiveness in several key manufacturing sectors—including semiconductors, clean energy, electric vehicles (EVs), and parts and products necessary to meet the demand for building new and improved road, water, and digital infrastructure.1 One group of researchers estimates that over the implementation period, the laws will create 230,000 manufacturing jobs annually in the United States that are supported directly by new investments.2
The Biden-Harris administration has taken many steps in the right direction, including strengthening domestic content standards; developing good-jobs principles to guide investments across the government; and refining evaluation criteria, oversight procedures, and partnership opportunities at the agency level. Yet the policy playbook for worker advocates to support high-quality manufacturing jobs is a work in progress. More robust guidance and scoring criteria for applicants for federal funds have successfully encouraged numerous recipients to commit to high-quality jobs and locating jobs in the United States. However, incentivizing subjective criteria still allows too many low-road employers to receive funds. Compared with federally supported construction work—where Davis-Bacon wage and benefit standards were enacted nearly a century ago and well-established industry practices help support a stable, well-qualified workforce—the federal government is just beginning to develop policies and procedures for upholding manufacturing job quality.3
This report takes initial steps to identify and refine the road map to supporting good union manufacturing jobs. It offers four lessons on how the Biden-Harris administration’s industrial policy strategy has worked to create new jobs and support emerging manufacturing sectors, and it suggests where policymakers can go from here to improve manufacturing job quality:
- Strong domestic content requirements spur investment and create more jobs in the United States.
- Pair consistent incentives to boost job quality with ongoing oversight.
- Unions are crucial partners in training and retaining a skilled workforce.
- Further administrative and legislative action is needed to raise standards, spread best practices, and uphold minimum standards.
In this way, this report is a tool for existing agency leaders, policymakers, and advocates for manufacturing workers. Many of the IIJA, IRA, and CHIPS investments are still years from completion, giving this administration and the next ample opportunity to rationalize its guidance and review processes across agencies to reflect emerging best practices. With its recent Executive Order on Investing in America and Investing in American Workers, the Biden-Harris administration has taken an important step to harmonize strong job quality standards across awarding agencies and signaled its intention to further refine its approach as implementation continues.4 Moreover, Congress—and even state and local policymakers—should act to expand these incentives to more types of spending and explore how additional standards on government manufacturing jobs can support consistently high standards. By reviewing the manufacturing job quality policies of the IIJA, CHIPS, and IRA, progressive advocates have a chance to strengthen and expand the wins of the current administration and ensure that the American manufacturing sector is an engine of middle-class growth.
The Biden-Harris administration’s industrial strategy, explained
For decades, problematic trickle-down trade policy allowed multinational corporations to undercut American manufacturing jobs and accelerated offshoring that hollowed out the American manufacturing sector. Unionization rates fell and workers—especially workers without college degrees—struggled to find decent jobs with a route to the middle class.5 U.S. manufacturing fell behind both as a source of stable employment with good wages for millions of American workers and as a competitor with other nations. The manufacturing sector shrank as a percentage of total employment, going from 22 percent of the nonfarm workforce in 1979 to just 9 percent in 2019.6 Starting in the 2000s, competition with Chinese goods manufacturers drove much of this change—contributing to 55 percent of job losses in the sector from 2000 to 2019.7 For example, the United States consistently ran a deficit in steel products over a similar period, importing nearly 25 percent of its steel as of 2019.8
As EVs, clean energy, and semiconductors have emerged as key industries of the future for a modern, competitive U.S. industrial base, American manufacturers have had to play catch-up to meet demand. China and Europe have led the United States in EV manufacturing for years, with the United States making up just 18 percent of worldwide production from 2017 to 2020.9 Similarly, new semiconductor fabrication has increasingly moved overseas, keeping industry hiring flat over the past two decades.10 And U.S. manufacturers of clean energy components such as solar panels have been undercut as foreign manufacturers dump products onto American markets, using predatory pricing fueled by domestic subsidies—and, in some cases, the use of forced labor11—to capture market share at the expense of U.S. firms.12
The Biden-Harris administration has tackled these problems through an industrial policy platform that combines large direct investments to build out manufacturing facilities in targeted sectors; domestic preferences to increase demand for American-made materials; and incentives to build domestic demand for products in these sectors and to ensure jobs created through the spending are high quality.13 These investments, coupled with a complementary trade policy centered on American workers’ competitiveness, have facilitated an unprecedented amount of private sector investment in U.S. industrial redevelopment.14
These investments combat climate change, claim a stake in global leadership in manufacturing, and increase the supply chain’s resiliency, while offering a potential source of high-quality jobs for workers from all walks of life.15 The Semiconductor Industry Association estimated that CHIPS’ $39 billion16 in incentives had spurred another $450 billion in private investments across 90 projects as of August 2024, creating an estimated 58,000 jobs.17 IIJA investments in EV battery manufacturing and IRA rebates for EV production have helped the United States outpace the rest of the world in EV manufacturing investments over the past three years,18 and all of the Big Three American automakers have announced new EV and battery plants in the United States since 2021.19 Together, researchers estimate that the three bills will directly create 230,000 manufacturing jobs annually, many of them accessible to workers without four-year college degrees or significant prior experience in manufacturing.20
The Semiconductor Industry Association estimated that CHIPS’ $39 billion in incentives had spurred another $450 billion in private investments across 90 projects as of August 2024, creating an estimated 58,000 jobs.
National Institute of Standards and Technology, "CHIPS for America"; Semiconductor Industry Association, "The CHIPS Act Has Already Sparked $450 Billion in Private Investments for U.S. Semiconductor Production" (2022).
4 lessons on creating good manufacturing jobs
The Biden-Harris administration’s industrial policy agenda has shown that attaching standards to government spending can foster domestic investments in manufacturing and create good jobs, especially when paired with complementary tariffs and other trade policy support. However, additional administrative and legislative actions are necessary to uphold high-quality jobs consistently and encourage recipients to build partnerships with unions and community organizations. Progressive policymakers can do more to ensure the new manufacturing jobs created through existing and future federal investments offer good wages and the chance to join a union and are accessible to workers from all walks of life.
Lesson 1: Strong domestic content requirements spur investment and create more jobs in the United States
Domestic content preferences mandate that certain goods or components in a product used on a federally funded or supported project are made in the United States. Strong domestic content requirements help uphold a stable market for existing U.S. products and spur additional investment as private sector businesses work to meet additional demand for the goods and materials sparked by new investments. They also change the financial calculus of offshoring and thereby help strengthen the hand of worker advocates and policymakers in negotiating higher job quality standards. The domestic content standards included in the IIJA and the IRA have encouraged investment in American manufacturing, though the administration can take additional steps to close loopholes and strengthen its domestic content requirements further.
While Buy America domestic content preferences have long applied to some types of government investments, the IIJA strengthened standards for domestic content on infrastructure and transportation projects receiving federal funding by including Build America, Buy America (BABA) requirements for a greater range of infrastructure projects and expanding coverage to manufactured products and many types of construction materials.21 Federally assisted infrastructure projects must use domestically produced iron, steel, construction materials,22 and manufactured products.23 In addition, the successful implementation of BABA will help reduce the use of broad, open-ended waivers of general applicability that have long undermined the impact of Buy America in favor of time-limited, narrowly targeted waivers as companies work to ramp up their domestic production capacity.24 For example, the Federal Highway Administration deviated from its broad and long-standing general manufactured products waiver when it applied Buy America to EV chargers purchased under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and took steps to discontinue the general waiver.25
Policy toolkit: Build America, Buy America
The Build America, Buy America Act—part of the IIJA—extended and strengthened domestic content standards to all infrastructure projects that receive federal assistance starting in May 2022.26 While domestic content preference laws in the past typically only covered iron, steel, and, in a few specific instances, manufactured goods, the new standard under BABA additionally requires that all construction materials as well as all manufactured goods be produced in the United States.27 For manufactured goods, not only must final assembly take place in the United States, but also more than 55 percent of all components by total cost must be mined, produced, or manufactured in the United States.28 If necessary, agencies can issue narrow, time-limited waivers in a transparent manner to overcome short-term market limitations, thereby allowing projects to proceed while sending a market signal to companies to encourage capital investments to fill supply chain gaps. Before approval, agencies post proposed waivers online for a 15-day public comment period. Final rules governing the standard were issued in August 2023.
The Biden-Harris administration also established the Made in America Office as part of Executive Order 14005, later codified in the IIJA.29 This office was established to help onshore supply chains and reduce the need for waivers that undermine domestic content standards.30 The office also publishes resources about waivers to help businesses and the public understand the new requirements.31 Some federal agencies have been slow to move from broad, long-term waivers and support transparent use of the MadeinAmerica.gov website as a centralized resource for posting waivers and proposals. However, doing so will open up markets for existing domestically manufactured products and encourage expansion of domestic production of waivered products by signaling a market shortage.32 Furthermore, while general waivers bypass existing production and muddy visibility for companies seeking to fill supply chain gaps, narrow, time-limited waivers coupled with transparency can help expand domestic production by incentivizing companies to reach the market before existing waivers expire.
The IRA extended domestic content incentives as a bonus to tax credits for clean energy projects and EVs, the first time that domestic content has been attached to a tax credit. The production tax credit covers clean energy production and offers a 10 percent bonus for the first 10 years of electricity production,33 while the investment tax credit covers building or retrofitting of new energy projects.34 Iron, steel, and a certain percentage of the total cost of manufactured products must be produced in the United States to earn the credit.35 The IRA also offers a credit for consumers purchasing new EVs with battery minerals produced or extracted in the United States or free-trade partner countries, batteries assembled in North America (including Mexico and Canada), and final assembly in North America under Section 30D until 2032.36 Some CHIPS funds, such as the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, assess applicants on whether and how they plan to use iron, steel, and construction materials manufactured in the United States but do not explicitly require it.37
Together, these standards and incentives, alongside generous domestic manufacturing subsidies such as those found in Section 45X of the IRA, have helped spark a boom in manufacturing the products needed by recipients of infrastructure dollars. Companies have so far announced more than $900 billion in private investments, largely in domestic manufacturing.38 Private investments have been targeted at counties that lost manufacturing jobs over the past two decades; 83.2 percent of counties receiving new private investments have manufacturing sectors that have shrunk since 2001, larger than the share among all U.S. counties.39
To produce vehicles that can qualify for consumer tax credits, at least 14 battery plants had been announced in the United States within a year of the IRA’s passage—including from each of the Big Three automakers—totaling more than $70 billion in private investment in American EV battery supply chains.40 Many private projects, such as a $50 million investment at a GE facility in Schenectady, New York, cite domestic content guidance as a reason for locating projects in the United States, with a GE representative noting, “We were able to announce this project due to the certainty of the IRA and the domestic content guidance.”41 The scale of private investment in new manufacturing facilities to meet the anticipated demand shows that strong domestic content requirements can effectively prompt large-scale investments in American manufacturing. However, the administration can take additional steps to close loopholes and further strengthen its implementation of domestic content requirements.
Lesson 2: Pair consistent incentives to boost job quality with ongoing oversight
The Biden-Harris administration’s economic investments include a variety of incentives aimed at encouraging applicants for competitive funds to create jobs that pay good wages and offer the chance to join a union. Unlike the domestic content standards—which include bright-line standards to determine whether an actor complies—manufacturing job quality review is a largely subjective evaluation that typically asks beneficiaries to demonstrate that they have built-in job quality standards, workforce training, high-road contractual agreements, and partnerships necessary to support good jobs and improve access for historically marginalized workers.42 While there is significant opportunity to strengthen these processes to encourage consistently high standards among funding recipients and uphold compliance, these incentives are a good start for incorporating good-jobs policies into federal support for manufacturing jobs.
Agencies have included these incentives in regulations that explain how the agency interprets the law; guidance from an agency on how it plans to apply the law; and notices of funding opportunity (NOFOs), which announce an available award, give applicants a list of materials they must submit and a timeline for assessment, and specify the rubric that the funding agency will use to score applications. Agencies then review applications for funding to assess how well they meet these criteria. Typically, evaluation happens side by side with review of job quality and equity standards for any construction jobs funded by the project.
For example, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-administered investments require applicants to submit a community benefits plan (CBP) that describes their commitments to job quality; diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility; the Justice40 Initiative; and community and labor engagement.43 These plans are unique to the DOE and differ from the community benefits agreements—which are contracts negotiated between project developers and local community representatives that often require specific job quality and equity commitments—described in more detail below. Some DOE programs also target communities that the energy transition could negatively affect. For example, applicants for IIJA Battery Materials Processing and Battery Manufacturing grants are scored on their ability to offer good wages and benefits;44 whether they offer workers the free and fair opportunity to join a union; and whether the facility will create jobs for low-income workers, workers in rural communities, and workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the anticipated reduction in demand for fossil fuels as green alternatives come online.45
The DOE guidance on its Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grant—a funding program for clean vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers—instructs that higher scores be given to “projects that are likely to retain collective bargaining agreements and/or an existing high-quality, high-wage hourly production workforce, such as applicants that currently pay top quartile wages in their industry.”46 While this measure is only offered as an example for applicants to show they will provide market wages and respect workers’ bargaining rights, it is a first step in providing clear evaluation metrics.
Applicants for CHIPS semiconductor investments are assessed based on their commitment to the departments of Labor and Commerce’s Good Jobs Principles,47 which include factors such as whether new jobs created will offer good pay and benefits, are accessible to a diverse range of workers, and respect workers’ right to join a union.48 Applicants are asked to demonstrate how they will partner with community organizations—including labor unions (as described in Lesson 3 below)—and provide plans to “recruit, train, hire, retain, and upskill a diverse workforce sufficient to meet the operating needs of the entire facility.”49
These job quality measures represent the first governmentwide effort since the 1960s to ensure that federally supported manufacturing jobs adhere to higher standards.50 Agencies have begun to successfully extract commitments from manufacturers receiving funding. While the federal government should go much further to set high and consistent manufacturing job quality standards, several projects selected to receive federal grants have made firm commitments to creating good jobs. For example, Talon Metals, which previously established a workforce development partnership in Minnesota with the United Steelworkers (USW),51 received $114 million in funding for a minerals processing plant in North Dakota.52 Century Aluminum expects to employ 1,000 union workers represented by the USW for a green aluminum smelter selected as part of the DOE’s Industrial Demonstrations Program.53 As part of the same program, the DOE also selected a union project for expansion in Middletown, Ohio, where Cleveland-Cliffs will receive up to $500 million to replace an existing blast furnace, creating 2,500 jobs represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.54 Semiconductor manufacturer Micron received $6.1 billion to build plants in New York and Idaho after agreeing to meet with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents some semiconductor manufacturing workers, to discuss a labor peace agreement. However, the government should continue to encourage recipients to achieve final agreements with worker representatives.55
Still, evaluation criteria and review processes vary across the government, and many recent fund recipients do not exhibit the same commitment to job quality.56 Since federal manufacturing job quality incentives are relatively new, applicants and agency reviewers are often unfamiliar with best practices. Monitoring compliance can also be difficult since investments often support new facilities that are years from completion, and reporting requirements and public disclosure vary across the government.57 The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) should receive funding to help agencies establish strong, uniform baseline criteria across the government and monitor outcomes. As the administration makes new rounds of funding available, it should take further steps to evaluate its progress in achieving good jobs, strengthening guidance and evaluation criteria, empowering the DOL to provide critical assistance, strengthening reporting and compliance mechanisms, and better encouraging emerging best practices.
Lesson 3: Unions are crucial partners in training and retaining a skilled workforce
Unions and community organizations play a critical role in creating training opportunities and providing oversight necessary for the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of ensuring its economic agenda creates high- quality jobs that are accessible to workers from all walks of life. Unions are effective partners for private and public ventures seeking to build and retain a highly skilled workforce and can act as trusted representatives to ensure projects and manufacturers live up to their job quality commitments. Policymakers at federal agencies have taken steps to encourage recipients of federal spending to partner with unions.58
Several IIJA and CHIPS funding opportunities invite applicants to report on partnerships with labor unions. The CHIPS Incentives Program funds ask applicants about their partnerships with community organizations, including labor unions, to support and retain their facility workforce.59 IIJA EV batteries grants ask applicants whether the project has letters of support from labor unions and community groups.60
In addition, the Biden-Harris administration has supported partnerships between employers and labor unions to complement its investments in manufacturing.61 The Department of Labor has experience cultivating these kinds of partnerships, and other agencies should work with the DOL to help these programs succeed. The DOL launched the Advanced Manufacturing Apprenticeship Sprint to kick-start labor-management partnerships to train workers for advanced manufacturing projects,62 such as the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute’s Partnership for Advanced Manufacturing Apprenticeship, developed jointly with 200 companies.63 The Department of Energy partnered with the AFL-CIO to develop the Battery Workforce Initiative, creating standards for training partnerships to equip workers with the skills needed for new EV battery manufacturing jobs.64
As construction of manufacturing facilities nears completion, labor unions will prove to be effective partners in training new cohorts of workers with the skills needed for manufacturing EV batteries, semiconductors, and clean energy components; retaining a skilled workforce in advanced manufacturing; and overseeing facility progress toward the commitments they made to offering good jobs. To achieve the government’s workforce goals, oversight agencies must engage in ongoing monitoring to ensure commitments to partner with labor and community groups.
Policy toolkit: Labor-management partnerships
Labor-management partnerships are created and run together by unions and businesses to accomplish shared goals, such as developing training and apprenticeship opportunities for workers or overseeing provision of health and retirement benefits plans. For example, workforce training partnerships with labor unions have a long track record of success in a range of industries. WRTP/BIG STEP, a partnership between Wisconsin construction trades and manufacturing unions and builders, offers manufacturing training programs and advances equity in the manufacturing sector.65 The United Auto Workers and Ford train new apprentices through joint trusts,66 and the UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy received $2 million in DOE funding to continue developing its High Road Battery Training Program with the battery manufacturer Sparkz.67
Research finds labor-management training partnerships not only benefit workers but also offer a range of benefits to employers, including improved recruitment and retention of skilled workers, higher work quality, higher productivity, and better employee relations.68 Federal agencies that encourage training partnerships between labor unions and recipients of public funding help ensure that projects have access to a pipeline of skilled workers; connect workers, especially workers from underrepresented communities, with quality jobs and training opportunities; and have an additional means of oversight over the project’s progress toward creating good jobs from a trusted worker representative.
Lesson 4: Further administrative and legislative action is needed to raise standards, spread best practices, and uphold minimum standards
While the administration has found success in kick-starting large private investments in American manufacturing and made significant progress in implementing good-jobs criteria in its funding review processes, there are further steps that it should take to guarantee that existing and future economic investments in manufacturing create good jobs.
Some of this can be achieved through further refinement of existing administrative review processes to emphasize practices that result in demonstrable wage and benefit gains and support disclosure requirements as well as active partnerships with workers and communities to monitor and enforce job quality commitments.
For example, agencies should expand the use of community benefits agreements (CBAs). CBAs are legally binding contracts, negotiated by businesses and community and worker representatives, that can establish job quality standards at a covered facility, including wage and benefit standards, targeted and local hire protections, union neutrality agreements, and joint training partnerships. When community benefits agreements include labor unions, they can hold projects to strong baseline job quality standards. The Congressional Labor Caucus published a letter to the secretary of commerce in February 2024 urging the agency to go further in ensuring CHIPS recipients “sign community benefits agreements that include commitments to respect workers’ right to organize and to pay industry-leading wages; and include specific, measurable data on wages and benefits in contracts to receive CHIPS funds.”69
Policy toolkit: Community benefits agreements
Community benefits agreements are pre-hire agreements negotiated by project owners, labor unions, and other community representatives that can be used to establish legally enforceable working standards for a project.70 Project owners and workers benefit since the agreements support a consistent supply of high-quality labor and avoid costly work stoppages resulting from labor disputes while offering workers enforceable baseline wage and benefit standards. Project owners can also agree to targets for hiring local workers, workers of color, women, workers from economically disadvantaged communities, and small businesses.
In addition, recently updated uniform grants guidance—a set of standards published by the Office of Management and Budget that applies to all federal awards—allows awarding agencies broader use of several job quality measures that can be included in community benefits agreements.71 This includes allowing agencies to score bidders on their commitments to specific numbers and types of U.S. jobs, wages, benefits, training, and other protections; permitting the use of targeted hire, offering a predecessor contract’s employees right of first refusal and agreeing to uninterrupted delivery of services in grants; and preventing recipients from using funding for union busting.
Similarly, encouraging the use of labor peace agreements among public fund recipients can help prevent disruptions on publicly supported projects. For example, the Communications Workers of America and Akash Systems signed a labor neutrality agreement last fall to ensure production workers at a semiconductor facility in Oakland, California, can exercise their right to come together in unions without employer opposition. They also announced their intention to collaborate with Jobs to Move America on a workforce development plan to increase access for underrepresented groups.72
The DOL is a key partner in educating and spreading best practices among agencies and providing technical assistance. The department has played a central role in advising awarding agencies as they have developed and refined job quality review processes. Yet even when applicants are asked about job quality and labor partnerships, awarding agencies may not consistently prioritize these commitments across funding streams or systematize monitoring to ensure ongoing compliance. The DOL should receive funding to coordinate with agencies on common evaluation and data reporting requirements that will support consistency across the government regarding job quality outcomes and applicant expectations.
With its recent Executive Order on Investing in America and Investing in American Workers, the Biden-Harris administration has signaled that it may take action on many of these steps.73 For example, the order directs agencies implementing the IIJA, CHIPS, and IRA to prioritize recipients that demonstrate “positive labor-management relations,” such as by being a signatory of community benefits agreements, collective bargaining agreements, or agreeing to neutrality in a union election as well as investments that pay family-sustaining wages—suggesting benchmarks such as upper-quartile industry pay or union-negotiated wages.74 In addition, it establishes an Investing in Good Jobs Task Force, co-chaired by the secretary of labor, to coordinate implementation among agencies. Full implementation of the order will help standardize effective criteria for good jobs across the federal government.
Policymakers can also build on the successes of the IIJA and IRA domestic content requirements by closing loopholes and expanding the range of projects covered to fully implement widely popular domestic content laws.75 This includes requiring vehicles leased to consumers and medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles to comply with strong domestic content requirements in order to receive the full federal tax benefits;76 ensuring agencies accelerate implementation of BABA and consistently abide by the law’s narrowed, transparent, and time-limited waiver processes;77 making certain that iron and steel products are correctly categorized to uphold strong domestic content standards; and ensuring trade agreements do not undercut efforts to support domestic battery mineral production efforts.78 In addition, the government should educate stakeholders on the laws’ new requirements and provide outreach to recruit more small- and medium-sized American manufacturers.79
Finally, Congress can do more to uphold high standards on U.S. manufacturing investments. Job quality incentives are strongest when used in conjunction with strong baseline standards—as is common in other publicly supported sectors. For example, the federal government adopted construction prevailing wage standards nearly a century ago to ensure that government dollars do not undercut local wage and benefit standards, thereby preventing a race to the bottom on publicly funded construction projects.80 Research finds that prevailing wage standards reduce poverty, narrow racial wage gaps, promote quality work, and protect union gains.81 Yet these standards are not applied to manufacturing. Without effective policies in place, the build-out of several emerging sectors could reduce the quality of manufacturing jobs. Pro-worker advocates and lawmakers should support the creation of baseline manufacturing wage and benefit standards and push for expansion of the incentive structures adopted in the IIJA, the IRA, and the CHIPS and Science Act to new spending programs.82
Job quality incentives are further strengthened by offering workers the opportunity to join a union. Policymakers should enact the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to make the benefits of collective bargaining accessible to all American workers. Unions give workers a voice on the job to negotiate for better wages, safer working conditions, and training opportunities to develop new skills on the job and can even lead to higher productivity.83
Conclusion
The Biden-Harris administration’s signature industrial policy program—the first in decades in the United States—offers essential lessons on how the government can directly and indirectly create high-quality jobs in manufacturing. Large investments in building out domestic manufacturing capacity, critical infrastructure investments that use American materials and products, targeted tariffs, and worker-centered trade policies can spur even larger private investments in manufacturing and create thousands of manufacturing jobs.
Policymakers have made progress in the use of job quality incentives to improve the likelihood that these jobs are high quality but should also pursue enforceable minimum standards and encourage partnerships with unions that create pipelines for workers to gain skills and connect with jobs that pay good wages. Already, the scope of public and private investments from the IIJA, CHIPS, and the IRA has exceeded the scale of any federal investment in manufacturing in decades. By strengthening and expanding the reach of the manufacturing job quality policies of the IIJA, CHIPS, and IRA, advocates can ensure that the American manufacturing sector is an engine of middle-class growth.