electric vehicles

By Brian Wakamo - Inequality.Org, April 15, 2022

After nearly 30 years in the labor movement, Cindy Estrada is well familiar with the corporate playbook. “As soon as wages and benefits are decent, they want to move that work somewhere else.” That’s what happened, the United Autoworkers Vice President explained at a recent rally, after Oshkosh Defense secured a huge contract to build postal vehicles.

“The ink was still drying,” Estrada said, “when they announced they were moving the work to South Carolina.”

UAW members had fully expected to build the postal trucks in the existing Oshkosh Defense facility in Wisconsin. After all, the company had won the contract on the basis of their quality work. Instead, Oshkosh Defense plans to convert a vacant former Rite-Aid warehouse in notoriously anti-union South Carolina to fulfill the postal contract, circumventing the unionized workforce in Wisconsin.

Estrada and other UAW officials joined environmental groups and political leaders outside U.S. Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. on April 6 to deliver 150,000 petitions demanding that the new postal vehicles be built with union labor.

“We have nothing against South Carolina workers,” Estrada said. “We believe every worker should have democracy in their workplace.”

By Lucy Dean Stockton - The Lever, September 27, 2023

This story was produced in collaboration with The Nation.

The United Auto Workers are entering their third week of the first-ever simultaneous strike against the three big automakers, and for the first time, a sitting US president, Joe Biden, joined them on the picket line. Executives at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis are pushing back on worker demands by invoking the climate crisis. They say it is impossible to give workers what they want while also making a swift transition to manufacturing electric vehicles.

On September 14, Ford’s CEO Jim Farley said that the union’s demands — higher wages, better hours, an end to tiered employment, and guaranteed job security in a green energy transition — could send the company into bankruptcy. Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, said that the union’s demands are “unrealistic” and would make GM less competitive. Major outlets have echoed these claims, even arguing that the UAW’s strike will harm the environment by stalling EV production.

But these corporate arguments are undercut by the fact that these companies have authorized billions in stock buybacks, special dividends, and executive compensation. The automakers could have invested that money into worker compensation and electric vehicles, but instead steered it toward stockholders.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 27, 2023

By John Cast and Ernie Gotta - Workers Voice, September 26, 2023

On Sept. 15, the United Auto Workers (UAW) began, for the first time, a strike against each of the Big Three automakers—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors (GM). The following Friday, Sept. 22, the strike was expanded from an initial three production facilities to include 38 parts suppliers, bringing the total number of strikers to just under 20,000.

Demands include the need to raise long stagnant wages to match inflation, the end of a tiered wage system, bringing back cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), and the institution of a four-day week—or a 32-hour week at 40 hours pay. Another demand raised is the restoration of the defined-benefit pension and retiree health care. Any workers hired since 2007 have not had these benefits.

UAW President Shawn Fain noted in his live-stream address to union members that the Big Three can easily afford to give auto workers these demands—and more. Fain stated, “Finally, and this is key: the cost of labor for the Big Three is around 4–5 percent of total operations. Think about that. They could double our wages, not raise car prices, and still make billions of dollars.”

The UAW leadership is calling their tactic the “Stand Up Strike,” in which only a selected few plants go on strike. Initially, 13,000 of the 150,000 UAW members employed by these companies were on strike at the three plants before the walkout was expanded to the parts distribution centers, adding an additional 5600 members to the picket lines. Fain explained, “The beauty of the stand-up strike is that it provides us maximum flexibility moving forward. We are keeping all of our options open as we continue to bargain with the companies. So an all-out strike is still possible. Our options are open.”

The great majority of rank-and-file workers have shown great enthusiasm for the strike. Yet some of the ranks expressed skepticism when the tactic was announced. For example, during a Facebook live stream, many workers commented in the chat that they wanted a stronger response; they wanted all of the 150,000 workers to go out on strike at once.

While the “Stand Up Strike ” doesn’t yet evoke the same power and rank-and-file driven initiative as the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, there have been significant changes and a more aggressive class-struggle posture taken by the new UAW leadership in comparison to its predecessors. From refusing a long-standing tradition of shaking hands with the Big Three CEOs prior to negotiations, to the class-struggle rhetoric of wrecking the billionaires’ economy, Fain recognizes that rank-and-file UAW members are fed up with the usual bureaucratic pomp and circumstance of the past few decades.

At the same time, UAW leaders still align themselves with progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and are even welcoming strike-breaking President Biden to the picket lines. What type of solidarity can be expected from a president like Biden, who broke a potential railroad strike by forcing a deadly concessionary contract on union rail workers?

By Jeff Schuhrke - In These Times, September 26, 2023

On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to join a picket line when he visited striking United Auto Workers (UAW) members outside a GM parts facility in Belleville, Michigan.

“You guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot when the companies were in trouble,” the president said to picketing workers. ​“But now they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”

The president has voiced support for the UAW’s strike at the Big Three automakers since it began on September 15. But after former President Donald Trump announced plans to hold a campaign rally at a non-union auto parts plant near Detroit — which the media grossly mischaracterized as ​“Trump standing with striking autoworkers” — Biden was pushed by fellow Democrats to visit a UAW picket line.

As a candidate in 2019, Biden joined workers on picket lines, including striking GM employees. Candidate Bill Clinton also walked a picket line in 1992, as did candidate Barack Obama in 2007. But no president has ever joined a picket line while in office until today.

On the campaign trail, Obama promised workers that, if elected, he would ​“put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and ​“walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America” — a promise he never fulfilled. As Obama’s vice president, Biden rebuffed a request from Wisconsin labor leaders in 2011 to join their massive protest against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s push to curtail public sector union rights. 

Biden’s UAW picket line visit reflects the fact that the strike by union workers is so popular that the leader of the most pro-capitalist country on Earth believed being seen standing alongside them was politically advantageous.

By Nick French - Jacobin, September 26, 2023

Today President Joe Biden traveled to Detroit to join members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line in their strike against the Big Three automakers. The move was Biden’s strongest signal of support yet, after a number of more equivocal statements about the ongoing contract dispute. He is the first sitting US president in history to walk a picket line.

Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, declared that Biden went to Detroit because he is “deeply pro-worker.” One might doubt Buttigieg’s assessment, given that — despite Biden’s admirably pro-labor National Labor Relations Board — the president intervened to stop railworkers from striking over eminently reasonable demands less than a year ago and has so far been content to fund a transition to electric vehicles (EVs) with little regard for workers. (Buttigieg himself went on to qualify his statement: the president, he says, wants “the auto sector to succeed as well” and is “pushing the parties to get to a win-win deal that does right by workers.”)

In any case, to look at Biden’s decision as simply reflecting his personal commitments is to miss the bigger picture. Biden is looking toward reelection, Michigan is a crucial swing state, and the president and his team almost certainly feel a trip to the UAW picket line will be a boon to his electoral odds. And considering union favorability is at an all-time high and a majority of Americans support the UAW walkout, they’d be right to think so.

By Jane Slaughter, LaShawn English, et. al. - Labor Notes, September 26, 2023

By Jane Slaughter - Labor Notes, September 26, 2023

What can workers seeking to reinvigorate their unions learn from the new spirit in the United Auto Workers?

START WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT

One lesson is that member power does not have to start from a supermajority; that’s unlikely. UAW members are on strike today, with inspiring levels of rank-and-file energy, because four years ago a small group of activists founded a new reform caucus. That caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), boldly took advantage of an unexpected opportunity, organized like crazy, and won elections. Its candidates are now leading the union.

If UAWD had not existed and organized hard, this current fight that has potential to change the stakes for the entire labor movement would not be happening. At the top, the UAW would still be a pretty bad business union, intent on negotiating a cheap contract (perhaps with a b.s. strike), and members would be in the dark.

When the Justice Department began investigating the UAW for corruption, a few longtime activists saw the opening. In 2019, they founded UAWD and began a campaign—which seemed quixotic at the time—to change the UAW’s constitution so that members could vote directly for top officers.

Since the union’s founding in the 1930s, convention delegates had chosen the officers. From the 1940s until this year conventions were tightly managed by the aptly named Administration Caucus, founded by Walter Reuther. The process for amending the constitution is byzantine, but in a short time UAWD was approaching its goal of getting the required 15 locals representing 79,000 members on board to call a special convention. Then Covid hit, canceling local union meetings and closing plants.

UAWD rebounded, though, and was soon making its views known to the Justice Department: the way to clear out corruption was to let the members vote. This was the same tack taken by Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the 1980s, when their union was under investigation. TDU rejected the idea of a federal takeover, as many in government had advocated, and said instead: “Let the members decide.” The feds authorized a rank-and-file vote, Ron Carey was elected president with TDU’s support, and he went on to lead a stunningly popular and successful strike in 1997.

By Ronnie Smith, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 26, 2023

By Teddy Ostrow and Barry Eidlin - Jacobin, September 25, 2023

On Friday, September 22, United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain announced that the union would be expanding its “stand-up strike” against the Big Three automakers to thirty-eight parts distribution centers owned by General Motors (GM) or Stellantis. The five thousand workers at those sites are joining the thirteen thousand autoworkers at three assembly plants who walked out when the strike began on September 15.

The UAW’s strategy — striking all of the Big Three at once, but escalating gradually by beginning at a few worksites and calling out more over time to ramp up pressure — is unprecedented in the union’s history. The strike represents a dramatic departure from the union’s recent history in other ways as well, with leadership actively working to involve members in the contract campaign, and President Fain declaring that the union is fighting “for the good of the entire working class.” The leadership’s new approach is due in large part to the election of Fain and other officers associated with Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a union reform caucus that earlier this year swept out the corrupt old guard that had dominated UAW for over seventy years. 

Jacobin contributor Teddy Ostrow recently sat down with Barry Eidlin, associate professor of sociology at McGill University, to talk about the stand-up strike’s precedents in the 1936–37 sit-downs, the long history of efforts to reform the UAW, and the current strike’s implications for the broader labor movement in the United States and Canada.