In Wisconsin, Joe Biden says he's delivered the goods

An apprentice laborer from Verona introduces the president at DeForest union training facility

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Two years ago Sarah Varga was working at the Janesville Ice Arena and looking for something else to do. The salary was not sustaining her, she preferred working outside, and most of all she wanted to find something she loved to do. After talking with her father, a union plumber, and hearing how much he loved his work, she decided to try going into the building trades. She is now an apprentice laborer with Local 464 of the Laborers International Union of North America, which represents building trades workers in the Madison area, and works on construction projects in Verona. 

And on Feb. 8, 20 months after joining the training program, Varga found herself at a podium in DeForest’s LiUNA Training Center, introducing the president of the United States to a room full of her fellow union members. On one day’s notice.

“It was nerve-racking,” says Varga. But meeting Biden before she went on stage helped calm her nerves. “We were just talking — that’s why we were late — we were just talking about everything,” she says. Varga says Biden told her she reminded him of his granddaughter, a collegiate athlete like Varga had been, and they talked about their families. “It made me feel a little more at ease,” she says. 

Varga received a louder ovation than any speaker besides Biden from her fellow union members as she crossed the dirt training center floor to the podium bearing the seal of the president. She cracked a quick joke, and gave a personal version of the message Biden came to deliver.

After a few semesters of being a two-sport athlete in college, said Varga, “I decided that college wasn’t offering what I wanted to do with my life.” The apprenticeship program with the Laborers provided a different path. “Being a union laborer has taught me that I do not need a college degree to have a good paying, family supporting job with great wages, healthcare and a pension,” Varga said to applause.

Varga introduced the president, who entered to “Hail to the Chief,” hugged Varga at the podium, and flipped on a handheld microphone that allowed him to roam the stage.

Biden was in the Madison area Wednesday afternoon to hammer home the worker-centric message he had delivered the night before in his State of the Union address. Even the setting for Biden’s speech was designed to put jobs and workers front and center. Signs reading “Union Strong” covered the risers behind Biden that were made from rows of construction scaffolding. Laborers in bright orange LiUNA shirts, reflective vests, and white hard hats covered in scuffs and stickers filled the risers and lined the mezzanine railing overlooking Biden’s stage. A pair of workers stood on a scissor lift that had been pushed against the wall to get a better view.

Biden paced back and forth on the stage, turning to address the workers behind him and those on the mezzanine as he highlighted federal investments in Wisconsin and the overall uptick in the economy as the country continues to recover from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“I signed a once-in-a-generation investment putting Americans to work rebuilding our national infrastructure,” said Biden, referring to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. According to a White House news release, the $2.9 billion in federal funding that has been dedicated to infrastructure projects in Wisconsin includes $80 million to replace the Wisconsin River bridge in Columbia County, and a share of the $1 billion that the EPA has committed to environmental cleanup around the Great Lakes.

The president also touted his administration’s record on job creation. “We’ve created 12 million new jobs. A half-million jobs just last month. And now we’ve created more jobs in two years — more jobs in two years than any president has created in a single four-year term.”

Biden’s stop in Madison is part of a nationwide tour by Biden and administration officials to highlight his record. The president is expected to announce within the next couple of months whether he will run for reelection (though a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found only 37 percent of Democrats say they want him to do so), and the DeForest event felt at times like a campaign rally. “This is a blue collar blueprint to rebuild America,” he said, a day after he repeated the refrain “finish the job” 12 times in his State of the Union address, suggesting themes for a possible re-election campaign.

WisGOP Chairman Brian Schimming was not impressed. “Biden’s first re-election campaign stop in Madison will do nothing to improve his standing with Wisconsin voters,” he said in a statement. “Wisconsin households and businesses have faced crushing inflation, decreasing real wages, and increasing energy bills for months and trying to buy votes with his inflationary spending and Green New Deal agenda isn’t the answer to helping Wisconsin families.”

Both Biden and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway — who spoke earlier in the program along with fellow Democrats U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers — noted that Madison’s Bus Rapid Transit project is receiving millions of dollars in federal money, including for the purchase of 46 electric buses. Biden, in a speech last month to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, called the purchase “a big deal.” On Wednesday, Rhodes-Conway added that construction of the Bus Rapid Transit system will be done with union labor. 

“With direct support from the Federal Transit Administration, we broke ground on the East-West Bus Rapid Transit line,” said Rhodes-Conway. “And these infrastructure improvements are accompanied by good paying union jobs, from the LiUNA workers who will help build the BRT to the Teamsters who will operate it.”

In 2017, Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill into law preventing cities like Madison from requiring contractors working on publicly funded projects to use union labor. Those restrictions don’t apply to the federal money being used for the Bus Rapid Transit project. 

“Right here in Madison, our members will be working on that project,” Kent Miller, president and business manager of the Wisconsin Laborers District Council, tells Isthmus in an interview.

Miller says that he expects federal investment to continue to increase the demand for his members’ work over the next few years; work that includes replacing lead pipes in Milwaukee and rebuilding roads and bridges all over the state. “The way the Bipartisan Infrastructure law is structured, over a five, six-year period as the funds come through, we see about a 20 percent increase in our work hours that we do every year. So we definitely see our organization growing,” says Miller. “It’s a win-win-win for everyone.”