The Biden administration would require firms that faucet $39 billion in funding for semiconductor manufacturing to supply reasonably priced youngster care for his or her employees, underneath guidelines attributable to be printed Tuesday.
The rules will mandate that companies receiving incentives underneath the Chips and Science Act, handed final yr, take steps corresponding to constructing day-care amenities close to new manufacturing websites, or giving employees cash to pay the prices by means of present native choices, in response to the Commerce Division, which is answerable for the regulation’s implementation.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has repeatedly talked about how an absence of kid care is holding again folks, significantly ladies, from returning to the workforce for the reason that begin of the pandemic in 2020.
President Joe Biden had proposed measures to enhance youngster care provision as a part of social spending applications value tons of of billions of {dollars} that did not win approval in Congress. The administration is now looking for to make use of the semiconductor laws to attain that purpose in at the very least one sliver of the economic system. Corporations will be capable to use a number of the funds they get by means of the federal government subsidy program to pay for youngster care.
Congress handed the regulation final yr after pandemic lockdowns and supply-chain disruption laid naked US reliance on chips from Asia and significantly Taiwan, the goal of frequent threats from China.
Whereas the regulation’s guiding purpose is defending nationwide safety, Raimondo in a speech final week underlined the advantages to ladies from the regulation, by way of potential jobs in manufacturing and development.
“We’d like chip producers, development firms and unions to work with us towards the nationwide purpose of hiring and coaching one other million ladies in development over the subsequent decade to fulfill the demand not simply in chips, however different industries and infrastructure tasks as nicely,” she mentioned.
The plans to incorporate youngster care within the semiconductor award necessities had been beforehand reported by the New York Occasions.
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