12/30/2023 0 Comments Shift car sales commissionHis plant, Toledo Propulsion Systems, received $760 million in federal funding to transform it from a transmission plant into a plant that makes EV parts. Totty, the Toledo-based UAW local president, has advocated heavily for union contracts at new battery plants. The UAW has so far had a string of organizing failures in the South, mostly associated with the region’s large number of foreign automakers, like Volkswagen and Nissan. “The shift to electrification both threatens jobs and it also threatens to establish another lower tier of wages in the industry,” he said. Here's HowĪutoworkers are watching this change with some trepidation, according to Marick Masters, a professor of management at Wayne State University who studies the auto industry and labor. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Tesla’s labor costs are even lower - at around $45 to $50 per worker per hour, according to industry analysts. Ford has estimated the Big Three’s average hourly labor costs, including benefits, amount to around $65 per worker, compared to about $55 for foreign nonunion automakers in the U.S. Meanwhile, nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota are gaining an edge in the EV space, and offering substantially lower compensation than the Big Three. Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz who studies labor issues and climate justice, told Grist.įord and Volkswagen have estimated that 30 percent less labor is required to build an EV compared to an internal combustion engine car, since EVs don’t require the complex parts needed to build engines and transmissions. “Now is really the moment, as the industry starts to take off, to ensure that those jobs can be union jobs,” J. To keep union membership strong, protect worker safety, and prevent the EV surge from undermining their bargaining power, the union has asked to include EV battery workers in their national contracts. Indeed, the vast majority of the Big Three’s proposed battery plants are nonunion. Many of those states have “right to work” laws that curtail collective bargaining, leading to lower union density and lower pay grades overall. Most new EV and battery plants are located in a growing “ Battery Belt,” with Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee leading the charge alongside the traditional automotive heartlands of Michigan and Ohio. The companies have also proposed 10 EV battery plants owned jointly with companies including South Korea-based LG Energy Solution and Samsung. “These corporations don’t want to share in our sweat equity with the profits we provide them.”Ĭollectively, the Big Three have committed to investing well over $100 billion in EV manufacturing over the next few years. ![]() “It’s our job to organize,” Tony Totty, president of UAW Local 14 in Toledo, told Grist. Workers, meanwhile, worry that billions in EV investments aren’t translating into good-paying, union jobs.Įmployees work at the assembly line of the Volkswagen ID 4 electric car in northern Germany on May 20, 2022. ![]() Automakers say meeting the union’s demands would threaten their ability to compete with nonunionized EV producers like Tesla, adding burdensome labor costs just as they’re making expensive investments in EVs. If the work stoppage goes on for more than 10 days, analysts estimate it could cost automakers over $1 billion and hurt plans to push new electric vehicles onto the market.ĮVs, and what they mean for the future of union labor in the automotive sector, loom large over the picket line. “If we need to go all out, we will,” said Fain Thursday night on Facebook Live. UAW president Shawn Fain has warned that all 146,000 union workers are ready to strike at a moment’s notice. But the three closures could be just the beginning. ![]() ![]() For now, the strike covers only 13,000 workers at a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio and a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan. The strike marks a breaking point after months of negotiations failed to result in a deal to renew the union’s contract with Big Three automakers, which expired on Friday. For the first time in history, the United Auto Workers union, or UAW, initiated a strike targeting all of the Big Three automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, which owns brands like Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge. TV news footage from the night showed picketers intermingled with cars honking in support as R&B blared from sound systems on the sidewalks in front of the factory gates. At the stroke of midnight on Friday, in three automotive factories across the Rust Belt, nightshift workers left their posts and poured out onto the streets to join whistling, cheering crowds.
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