Biden celebrates the reopening of car plants in Illinois

President Biden plans to meet with the head of the United Automobile Workers in Belvidere, Illinois, on Thursday to celebrate the reopening of an assembly plant and promote a landmark labor deal with Detroit’s Big Three automakers, a trip that could help him critical support from the union.

The visit to the Stellantis plant comes as the company says it will also invest $4.8 billion to build a parts distribution center and an electric vehicle battery plant, both part of the deal struck last month between automakers and the union was closed.

Under the deal, the company will bring back all 1,200 jobs lost due to the assembly plant shutdown at higher wages and add an estimated 1,000 new union jobs, the White House said in a statement.

Government officials see the trip as a celebration of a momentous victory for union workers. But it is also a chance for Biden to cement his relationship with union voters at a key moment in the presidential campaign and draw a contrast with his predecessor and likely Republican challenger for the 2024 election, Donald J. Trump.

Both have done their best to win over union voters, especially in swing states where recent polls have shown Biden struggling and Trump has had some success in peeling away members of the traditionally Democratic group. In September, the two made back-to-back visits to autoworkers in Michigan as workers struck for higher wages, though their messages about the value of unions were decidedly different.

Biden made history with his visit as he became the first president to appear on a picket line in support of striking workers. When word came that the union had struck a deal with the automakers, Mr. Biden stepped away from a state dinner welcoming the Australian prime minister and called the head of the UAW, Shawn Fain, to congratulate him, a senior administration official said .

“The union situation is a win for Biden,” said Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. He said the president took “some pretty big political risks” when he showed up on a picket line and that “this is a credit-claiming moment for him.”

The meeting with Mr. Fain is part of a long-standing relationship with the union leader, who heads a union with about 400,000 active members, including a large presence in the swing state of Michigan. Mr. Fain has yet to give Mr. Biden the UAW’s endorsement, but he has also outlined ambitious goals that would be much harder to achieve if Mr. Trump returned to the White House.

During Trump’s four years in power, the National Labor Relations Board often took pro-corporate positions and was actively hostile to unions. And while Mr. Biden visited striking workers and expressed support for their strike, Mr. Trump visited a non-union factory in Michigan and said union members were being “sold down the river by their leadership.”

Gene Sperling, Mr. Biden’s liaison to the UAW and the auto industry, said the plant’s opening was a key element in the contract negotiations and called it a “huge victory” for auto workers. He said the deal with the union and the automakers reflected a vision Mr. Biden had long held.

“Even when he was working on his Build Back Better plan during the campaign, he told us he didn’t want a plan that sounded like, ‘We’re sorry you may lose your job, your factory and your community, but this is good for the overall economy,’” Mr. Sperling said. “He pushed for a strategy that says when there is technological disruption, we want companies to restructure, reinvest and rehire the affected workers in that same community.”

Mr. Sperling also described Mr. Biden’s long process of opening lines of communication with Mr. Fain, who has been critical of some of the administration’s decisions, such as the push for electric vehicles.

“His view was: We’re two working-class guys,” Mr. Sperling said of Mr. Biden’s response shortly before the president invited Mr. Fain to the Oval Office in July. The two have spoken on the phone several times since, including once when Mr. Biden called Mr. Fain to wish him a happy birthday.

Over the next four and a half years, Mr. Fain wants to organize at least some of the nearly two dozen non-union factories that foreign automakers such as Volkswagen and Toyota have built in the southern states. He also wants help from the federal government to push automakers to provide pensions or similar retirement benefits.

“We are going to organize ourselves tremendously,” Mr. Fain said in a video address streamed on social media on Wednesday.

“We have literally hundreds of workers in non-union factories contacting us,” he said. “They now see a better path.”

The Belvidere plant was opened by Chrysler in 1965 and once employed more than 5,000 workers. Most recently there was the Jeep Cherokee, but sales of that vehicle began to decline a few years ago, and Stellantis, created from a merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s Peugeot, began laying off employees. The factory was shut down in February.

Stellantis said none of its executives participated in Mr. Biden’s visit as the new contract had not yet been ratified.