DETROIT – Top officials in President Joe Biden’s administration visited a United Auto Workers union hall in Michigan on Tuesday to tout their efforts to support clean energy jobs, announcing new training guidelines for apprenticeships to expand the country’s battery workforce amid growth in the market for electric vehicles.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su characterized the latest initiative as a way to create a skilled workforce for the battery manufacturing sector and create an entry point to middle-class jobs. The government’s guidelines were developed in partnership between manufacturers, community colleges and labor, according to a news release from the Energy Department.
“President Biden is leading a renaissance in American manufacturing, and nowhere is that more evident than with the rapid growth of investment in electric vehicle production,” said Granholm in a statement.
“Good jobs have the power to change lives, and today we are expanding the pathways into those good jobs through Registered Apprenticeships in the fast-growing battery manufacturing industry,” Su said in a statement.
The new U.S. Department of Labor-certified national standards for registered apprenticeships for battery machine operators will accelerate the timeline for initiating new trainings and open the door for public funding of workforce development programs in battery manufacturing, the Energy Department’s news release states.
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