TRADE unions in the US have welcomed Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan for “changing the rules of our economy.”

The US president unveiled details of a 10-year, $2 trillion (£1.45tn) infrastructure plan on Wednesday, declaring that huge investment in better transport, clean energy, higher-quality housing and science and technology were needed if the country was to “outcompete China.”

The mammoth project covers upgrades to road and rail infrastructure, replacement of all lead piping in drinking water systems and putting “hundreds of thousands of people to work laying thousands of miles of transmission lines and [sealing off] hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells and abandoned mines.” 

It includes $100 billion (£72bn) for “green retrofitting” of schools and $400bn (£289bn) for childcare and elderly care infrastructure. US union leaders say it will create 2.3 million jobs over the decade, with Service Employees president Mary Kay Henry saying the care-sector investment “encourages the ability of home care workers in every state to join together in a union, turning poverty jobs into living wage jobs with secure benefits. A jobs programme has never been focused on an industry that is primarily composed of women of colour.”

And it includes “comprehensive pro-worker labour law reform,” according to president of the Teamsters general union Jim Hoffa.

The Protect the Right to Organise (Pro) Act would counteract and potentially outlaw “right to work” laws imposed by various US states which ban trade union security agreements in workplaces and undermine the right to collective bargaining.

The Act would ban employers from holding compulsory meetings “for the purpose of counteracting labour organisation,” a tactic deployed in Alabama’s Bessemer Amazon plant, where the company has forced workers voting on recognising a trade union to attend anti-union propaganda sessions.

It also allows unions to encourage solidarity industrial action at other workplaces.

The package has provoked outrage from Republicans, who have decried its likely impact on “right to work” laws and funding proposals including a rise in corporation tax from 21 to 28 per cent and reversing tax cuts for the wealthy passed by the Donald Trump administration.