Central New York has been preparing for a visit today from President Biden to mark the recent preliminary agreement struck between the U-S Department of Commerce and Micron. The more than 6.1 billion dollars of federal funds will help build the CHIP fab in Clay and allow the company to expand in Idaho. Senator Chuck Schumer says the project will strengthen the local manufacturing sector.
“For years communities that built America like Upstate New York, like Syracuse… we experienced the pain of so much loss of manufacturing. Hemorrhaging jobs to places like China. I’ll never forget the day Carrier said it was ending manufacturing in Syracuse,” said Schumer
Micron’s huge investment in the microchip manufacturing project is expected to create thousands of jobs in the plant itself, as well as many more thousands in service and supply-chain businesses to support the plant.
Schumer hinted President Biden will be announcing the details of the Whitehouse selecting Syracuse as one of the “Investing in America Workforce Hubs.”
“And that's going to help deliver assistance to companies, educational institutions, labor unions to build the pipeline of workers to fill their thousands of good paying jobs being created," added Schumer. "It's one of the reasons that Micron was excited to come to Syracuse because they knew they'd have a good labor supply.”
White House Spokesperson Natalie Quillian says other workforce hubs were announced in 2023.
“And our initial five hubs generated dozens of commitments to create workforce pipelines for tens of thousands of workers in semiconductor manufacturing, clean energy and infrastructure,” said Quillian.
President Biden is expected to land in Syracuse sometime this morning and will meet for a gathering at the MOST. WAER will have coverage later today during All Things Considered.