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Detroit is on strike. As of Friday, the United Auto Workers union, which represents about 40% of U.S. workers across all industries, is taking on the “Big Three” automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) with one goal: to include electric vehicle workers. under the union flag.
Strikes in the automotive industry are always serious, but this one is especially so.
Unions are not just about making a few extra bucks. This battle could determine not only the future of America’s clean energy transition, but also the outcome of the 2024 presidential election and the future of the Democratic Party. It’s a worthwhile fight, but it’s also a very, very dangerous one.
The first point to consider is how and where electric vehicles are made.While President Joe Biden’s original climate change executive order and the climate stimulus bill first passed by the House explicitly supported unions, the language of the final Inflation Reduction Act (despite its name as a climate bill) supported “housework, not regulations.” use alliance labor.
The change was not just due to the opposition of West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who played a key role in securing the IRA’s passage. It’s also the result of heavy lobbying by foreign multinationals, many of whom want to take advantage of the American South – where many new electric vehicle jobs are being created since those states tend to have lower labor and environmental standards – effectively owning them choose. China.
The fact that this race to the bottom is taking place stateside is one of the reasons behind the strike. The UAW wants to ensure workers making new electric vehicle batteries and other components receive union benefits.
In some ways, this is a life-or-death battle for the union. The transition to electric vehicles is expected to significantly reduce the number of jobs in the auto industry in the short term, because you simply don’t need the same number of parts and therefore the same number of workers on the assembly line as you do to build an internal combustion engine car. Ford CEO Jim Farley told the Financial Times back in 2022 that the transition to electric vehicles could require a 40% reduction in workers.
Some people—even some who promote workers’ interests—might say, “Who cares where the jobs are as long as they’re in America?” But there are significant political reasons for its importance.
This leads to the second point, which is the possible impact on the 2024 presidential election.
Union membership has declined significantly in the United States over the past few decades, but it remains a key component of the Democratic voting coalition. One of the reasons Donald Trump was elected in 2016 was that union labor in swing states like Pennsylvania voted for him.
Since then, union officials have done much of the groundwork to try to educate members about the former president’s failure to live up to the promises he made to workers. But if Biden fails to end the strike, Trump could be the beneficiary and American democracy the loser.
So I’m concerned about the ambition of these strikes. On the one hand, you can hardly blame autoworkers — who made major concessions during the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath — for wanting a bigger share of the three auto giants’ hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, which The Big Three grew 92% in 2008. past ten years. Biden himself said last week that “record corporate profits” require “record contracts” for workers. If he is ousted in 2024, it won’t just be America’s unions that suffer.
Regardless, the strikes and the EV transition in general are hastening a moment of reckoning for the Democratic Party. Wealthy coastal progressives who drive Teslas tend to care more about solving climate change than labor rights. Tesla Motors accounts for 60% of U.S. electric vehicle sales. But if Republicans nominate Trump and he wins, neither the planet nor workers will be safer.
How can Biden balance this economic and political circle? Perhaps by broadening the focus from UAW demands to the need for a broader global coalition around carbon pricing and labor standards.
While some believe it is more important for China to flood Europe with electric cars in violation of World Trade Organization rules than to get more cheap electric cars on the road, the hard political fact is that if Western countries are seen as selling out their workers, we will look to a harsher, broader shift toward Trumpian authoritarian populism.
A better idea would be for the U.S. and Europe to come together and develop joint labor and environmental standards on how electric cars are made. This will help avoid bidding wars with China or each other and imposing tariffs on vehicles that do not comply with these regulations.
These standards should take into account the total carbon load of production – for example, I’d like to know how much coal power or forced labor is used to produce all clean energy inputs, whether they come from China or elsewhere.
The stakes are too high for another race to the bottom.
rana.foroohar@ft.com
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