Biden meets with culinary workers on the eve of youth ministry in Nevada

President Biden met with members of Nevada's powerful culinary workers union on Monday, after the union averted a planned strike by signing contract deals with Las Vegas properties this weekend.

Mr. Biden visited the Vdara Hotel, one of the properties where the union agreed to a contract for its members, and greeted workers in an employee cafeteria — shaking hands, taking photos and at one point appearing on FaceTime with someone on the phone of a employee.

“Wall Street didn't build America. The middle class built America. Unions built the middle class. There would be no middle class without the unions,” he told the crowd. “So I came to thank you. Not only to thank you for the support you gave me last time, but also to thank you for your trust in the union.”

Biden, who is expected to easily win Nevada's Democratic primary on Tuesday, has often described himself as “the most pro-union president in American history.”

In June, when he was endorsed by a slew of unions at a rally in Philadelphia, he took the stage with his wife Jill Biden, who was wearing a T-shirt from her teachers union. Then, in September, he became the first sitting president to visit an active picket line when he joined striking autoworkers in Michigan. In fundraising appeals, Biden's campaign has called his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, a “scab” — a union name for someone who crosses a picket line.

The president's tight and public embrace of union workers comes as the country's labor movement is growing younger, more diverse and more progressive.

Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers who endorsed Mr. Biden last month, is seen as a liberal from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. The culinary union in Las Vegas is dominated by Hispanic women. The teachers and hospital workers who populate other unions that support Mr. Biden are more likely to be people of color and women than the police, firefighters and construction workers who populate the unions that have long been the core of Mr. Biden's political identity.

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting from Washington.