Joe Biden said the US dodged an economic crisis after Congress passed legislation averting a nationwide rail shutdown on 9 December.
The president was speaking at the White House before signing legislation that was approved in the Senate on Thursday and imposes a labor settlement on rail workers who were poised to strike in a dispute over pay and conditions.
He acknowledged that the deal did not include paid sick leave that the rail unions had insisted on, but he said he would work on that.
We still have more work to do in terms of getting paid sick leave, not just for rail workers but for every worker in America. That is a goal I had in the beginning and I'm coming back at it. The bill I'm about to sign ends a difficult rail dispute and helps our nation avoid what would have been an economic catastrophe at a very bad time in the calendar. Our nation s rail system is the backbone of our supply chain. We rely on so much of what we rely on on on a rail, from clean water, to food, and gas, to name a few. A rail shutdown would cause a lot of damage to our economy. Without freight rail, many of the US industries would be shut down. I want to thank Congress, Democrats and Republicans for acting so quickly. It was tough for me, because I knew this was a tough vote for the members of both parties. It was the right thing to do at the moment, to save jobs, to protect millions of working families from harm and disruption, and to keep the supply chain stable around the holidays.
Biden said 765,000 workers would have been put out of work because of the shutdown.
The president also praised a just-released jobs report showing the US added 263,000 jobs in November, while the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%:
We have created 10.5 m jobs since I took office, more than any administration in history at this point in the presidency. In America, 750,000 of them are domestic manufacturing jobs. Americans are working, the economy is growing, wages are rising faster than inflation, and we avoided a catastrophic rail strike.