Donald Trump

By staff - How We Fix The Climate, February 28, 2024

By Adam Williams, Andrew Glasford, and Peter Kalmus - Green New Deal Network, January 22, 2024

By Steven Greenhouse and Shawn Fain - In These Times, November 8, 2023

When Shawn Fain won the presidency of the United Auto Workers last March as an insurgent candidate, promising to transform the union and take on Detroit’s automakers, he spoke with veteran labor journalist and Century Foundation senior fellow Steven Greenhouse for In These Times. Fain laid out a militant agenda.

“We need to run contract campaigns where we engage the membership and go after their demands,” he said. ​“We haven’t done this in my lifetime.”

Six months later, Fain led targeted strikes against Ford, GM and Stellantis that have secured tentative agreements that include a 25% wage increase — more than all the raises that auto workers have received over the last 20 years combined. As UAW members began voting on the agreements, Greenhouse spoke with Fain again on November 5.

By Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa - Inside Climate News, October 31, 2023

The shift to electric vehicles is looking better today for U.S. auto workers than it did before a strike against the three major Detroit automakers, thanks to agreements that expand the reach of the United Auto Workers to include battery manufacturing plants.

But the legacy of the strike—at least as it relates to EVs—will depend on the extent to which the United Auto Workers can use its gains from new contracts to build momentum in organizing nonunion plants, like those operated by Tesla, Honda and Toyota.

The union reached a tentative agreement with General Motors on Monday, which follows similar resolutions in recent days with Ford and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler. The UAW made several major gains, including provisions that will ease a path to unionization of workers at battery manufacturing plants, even if those plants are not wholly owned by the automakers.

The proposals, which end a strike that began on Sept. 15, still need to be ratified by members.

“We’ve said for months, ‘We refuse to allow the EV transition to become a race to the bottom,’” said UAW President Shawn Fain following the Ford agreement. “Corporate America is not going to force us to pick between good jobs and green jobs.”

EVs are only 8 percent of sales of new cars and light trucks in the United States, but their share is growing as manufacturers introduce waves of new models and as governments and consumers take steps to reduce carbon emissions. Transportation is the country’s leading source of emissions that contribute to climate change.

The Inflation Reduction Act has helped to supercharge investments in EV manufacturing. Much of the investment is at joint ventures between automakers and battery companies, and the UAW was seeking an opportunity to represent this fast-growing part of the automotive supply chain.

By Chris Townsend - Marxist-Leninism Today, October 30, 2023

Any knowledgeable observer of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) over the past 50 years would have inevitably been forced to note that over recent decades the union’s membership had been dramatically slashed by hostile employers and politicians, that both union activity levels and influence had declined massively, and in many quarters the auto union had been transformed into a particularly virulent company union.

So addled and company-captured was the UAW top leadership that by 2014 a series of federal government criminal investigations and prosecutions grew, expanded, and eventually led to the removal of more than 30 national UAW leaders. The resulting U.S. government-ordered union election which produced Shawn Fain as new President of the UAW in March of this year was an earthquake both inside and outside the union.

Auto union old guarders and employers alike both feared the election of Fain. But by the narrowest margins Fain was elected to the top spot, and in just several months the union is already well into an expanding process of renewal. It is still early, and only time will tell, but the current strike struggle is clearly solid evidence of the new leadership’s intention to restore the union to a serious trade union path.

By Laura Clawson - Daily Kos, October 30, 2023

“Record profits mean record contracts” sounded like an aspirational slogan as the United Auto Workers went on strike against the Big Three automakers. But it’s what the union made happen over a six-week strike that now ends thanks to a tentative agreement with General Motors. Ford and Stellantis had agreed to tentative deals in recent days. Workers still need to ratify those contracts, but workers are back on the job at Ford and Stellantis and will be heading back to work at GM.

The union made big gains on pay and ending the two-tier system that left newer workers making much less than their longer-tenured coworkers. But that’s not all: The agreements offer both hope for a more just clean energy transition and a rebuttal to the top Republican talking point about the strike.

By Chris Townsend, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - The Valley Labor Report, October 12, 2023

By Cody Lonning, Anthony Flaccavento, Alan Minsky, and Marilyn Wrenn - Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, October 5, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, October 3, 2023

By Carolyn Fortuna - Clean Technica, September 30, 2023

Instead of joining a debate with 7 Republican candidates vying for the position of party presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump decided to visit a non-union auto parts plant in Michigan. During the stop, Trump excoriated the Biden administration for its push toward transportation electrification. The language Trump used during his Detroit stop was part of a broader goal to divide a self-identified pro-union advocate in President Joe Biden from an automotive workforce that is in turmoil.

The campaign rally was concurrent with the ongoing UAW strike, in which concerns over wage loss, diminishing benefits, and the length of workweek have led to an impasse between Detroit automakers and their workers. Moreover, the UAW feels the billions of dollars in tax incentives and loans sprinkled on automakers to retool their factories for EVs was flawed, as the incentive had not stipulated that automakers with a union-only workforce would benefit.

Trump sought to use the campaign stop to appeal to white working class voters in a critical swing state. The UAW malaise has been positioned by both parties as a gauge for potential votes, and the strike is having its effects on automakers — Ford halted production on its CATL project this week.

The language Trump used during his Detroit area stop is indicative of his powerful and quite scary persuasive capacity. Let’s zoom in on how he described EVs and his personal commitment to autoworkers. We’ll deconstruct facts, fantasy, and the ever-so-difficult gray areas that auto manufacturers are facing as they open a door to a new era of innovation – and the costs thereof.