electric vehicles

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, September 13, 2023

On the eve of the expiration of the United Auto Workers union's contract and a potential strike Wednesday, climate action groups were among more than 100 civil society organizations on Wednesday calling on the "Big Three" automakers to ensure that a new contract protects workers as the U.S. transitions toward making electric vehicles.

Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, and Earthjustice were among those expressing solidarity with nearly 150,000 union autoworkers who are demanding that employees of electric vehicle battery plants being developed by Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors are paid fairly—reflecting the record profits the automakers have reported in recent years.

"Within the next few years—the span of this next contract—lies humanity's last chance to navigate a transition away from fossil fuels, including away from combustion engines," wrote the groups in an open letter. "With that shift comes an opportunity for workers in the United States to benefit from a revival of new manufacturing, including electric vehicles (EVs) and collective transportation like buses and trains, as a part of the renewable energy revolution."

"This transition must center workers and communities, especially those who have powered our economy through the fossil fuel era, and be a vehicle for economic and racial justice," they added. "We are putting you on notice: Corporate greed and shareholder profits must never again be put before safe, good-paying union jobs, clean air and water, and a livable future."

By Matthew Cunningham-Cook and Lucy Dean Stockton - The Lever, September 12, 2023

Roughly 150,000 auto workers are preparing to launch what may be the biggest strike in decades this Thursday over their employers’ refusal to provide adequate pay and job security. Meanwhile, in the past twelve months, the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — have authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, effectively giving billions of dollars to shareholders that could have gone to auto workers.

On top of the stock buybacks, the Big Three have reported $21 billion in profits in just the first six months of 2023. Despite the enormous gains, the companies have cried poverty in response to union demands for wage increases to make up for decades of pay stagnation.

In a statement released last month, General Motors (GM) claimed that the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) demands “would threaten our ability to do what’s right for the long-term benefit of the team.”

As part of its efforts to force the auto companies to spend more on their workers, the UAW has taken aim at the corporations’ stock buyback approach, in which companies repurchase their shares to drive up their short-term value. In their negotiations over a new contract, which expires on Thursday, the union proposed automatic payments to workers when the companies authorize buybacks or expand dividends. 

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, September 12, 2023

Two days before their contract expires at midnight Thursday, the Auto Workers (UAW) are poised to strike the Big 3 automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—to recoup concessions made over the past two decades, end tiers, boost wages, and fight for a shorter workweek and other quality-of-life demands.

The auto companies are preparing for a strike, given the UAW’s new fighting spirit, on display in rallies and on the shop floor.

UAW President Shawn Fain was elected in March on a slate backed by the reform movement Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), on a platform of “no corruption, no concessions, no tiers,” ending nearly 80 years of one-party rule in the union.

The reform slate won every seat it contested and came into office with a mandate to take the union in a more militant direction, similar to the leadership shakeup in the Teamsters in 2021.

By Union Jake - Valley Labor Report, September 12, 2023

By Marcelina Pedraza, Torice Sawyer, Nick Livick, and Max Alvarez - Working People, September 11, 2023

By Jeff Schuhrke - In These Times, September 11, 2023

After decades of accepting concessions demanded by the Big Three automakers, the United Auto Workers (UAW) is now making bold demands of its own in one of the most spirited contract campaigns in the union’s recent history. At midnight on September 14, when the union’s contracts expired with Ford, GM and Stellantis without an agreement, workers at all three automakers went on strike at targeted locations.

The Big Three have made a combined nearly quarter trillion dollars in profits in North America over the past decade — including $21 billion in the first six months of 2023 alone. The companies’ shareholders and executives have been richly rewarded through stock buybacks and exorbitant salaries.

Meanwhile, the workers who actually make the cars have seen their real wages plummet by 30% over the past 20 years. In what was once a middle-class career, some autoworkers now make as little as $15.78 per hour, often working overtime to earn enough to support their families.

The union’s contract proposals, which UAW President Shawn Fain describes as ​“audacious and ambitious,” aim to not only counter the effects of recent inflation, but also to undo the consequences of years of concessionary bargaining by the UAW’s corrupt former leadership clique, whom Fain and a slate of rank-and-file-backed reformers replaced this March in the union’s first-ever election where top officers were directly chosen by the membership. 

“You cannot make $21 billion in profits in half a year and expect members to take a mediocre contract,” said Fain. ​“Our campaign slogan is simple: record profits mean record contracts.”

By Derek Seidman - Truthout, September 10, 2023

We may be days away from the biggest U.S. auto worker strike in years. The contracts between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the “Big Three” automakers (Ford, General Motors (GM) and Stellantis) expire on September 14. The agreements cover nearly 150,000 workers at the three corporations. So far, news reports indicate that the union and the auto giants remain far apart in negotiations. A whopping 97 percent of UAW members have authorized a strike.

The demands of autoworkers are clear. They include eliminating wage and benefit tiers, obtaining double-digit wage increases, the restoration of cost of living adjustments, defined benefit pensions for all workers, reestablishing retiree medical benefits, the right to strike over plant closures, new protections for workers if a plant shuts down, and more. Looming over the negotiations is the accelerating transition to electric vehicles (EVs). Auto workers are in a historic fight to ensure that EV production comes with high-quality union jobs.

The auto companies are not hurting financially. UAW President Shawn Fain has stressed the “record profits” of the Big Three, claiming the companies took in $21 billion in profits during the first half of 2023 alone and an astounding $250 billion over the past decade. Their CEOs have seen their “pay spike 40% on average over the last four years,” says Fain.

The auto workers’ fight is not theirs alone. In organizing to win substantial gains for their members against companies that are awash in billions in profit, victory for the UAW can help raise the wage floor for other workers and set an inspiring example of what militant trade unionism can achieve. It can help turn the tide on the trend where workers create ever-rising profits for corporations, but never seem to receive their just share.

By Keith Brower Brown - Labor Notes, September 8, 2023

Earlier this year, on the Ford stamping line in Buffalo, sewage started pouring onto the floor. Careless managers had shut down a pump to install new equipment and caused a deluge.

The workers didn't work meekly through the dizzying stench. They shut down their line, fast. And they did it with so much unity that their manager decided not to fight back.

That collective action didn't come out of nowhere. Over the last few years, Auto Workers at Local 897 have built a fighting safety culture.

They elected new local officers who turned “militant” into a badge of honor. Members stopped the line when poorly routed forklifts dropped metal sheets near workers. They got four managers fired with safety grievances and shop floor confrontations.

“We put fear into the company,” says longtime Ford Buffalo worker Ryder Littlejohn, “Now, we walk through the floor, it’s like the Red Sea parting.”

By Luis Feliz Leon - American Prospect, September 7, 2023

Patricia Elliston, 54, was laid off two years ago after nearly a decade at the Stellantis auto assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, when the company cut the second shift. She took a transfer to Stellantis’s Mopar Parts Distribution Center in Michigan, where she rents a house and rooms with other autoworkers in the Detroit suburb of Warren. Elliston’s husband, a non-union Machinist on disability, remained in Belvidere, caring for his elderly mother. His father retired from what was then named Chrysler in 1999, after decades working as an electrician in the skills trade department.

“We were told that moving out here would only be temporary, and we’d have the option to come back to Belvidere,” Elliston said. “But now that they’ve idled the plant, we don’t know if we can come back.”

Last year, Stellantis indefinitely shuttered its assembly plant in Belvidere, laying off more than 1,300 workers. It moved production to a plant in Toluca, in central Mexico, upending the lives of generations of families dating back to the company’s 1965 roots in Illinois.

That plant, and others in the U.S., are being used as bargaining chips in Stellantis’s negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW), which has approved a strike authorization if no deal is reached by September 14. Workers involved with the plant believe that the company is holding the plant’s idle status as leverage. “They’re dangling that they can reopen the Belvidere plant if we give up this or that,” Elliston said. “And nobody wants to give up anything—we’ve given up enough!”

By Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh - In These Times, September 7, 2023

The hot labor summer isn’t over yet. 

In a week’s time, the United Auto Workers may launch a strike of 150,000 of its members if the Big Three automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) – fail to meet the workers’ demands in new contracts by September 14. 

The Big Three made a quarter trillion dollars over the past decade. And with non-union electric vehicle and battery manufacturing on the rise in the United States, this may be a make or break moment for the union. So, with a more militant leadership at its helm, the UAW is demanding more than they have in a long time: serious wage increases; the elimination of tiers; the return of pensions, COLA, and retiree healthcare; and a 32-hour workweek.

For this episode, we unpack the auto workers’ demands, their stakes for the auto industry and the broader working class, and the burgeoning EV transition. We also explore how during this round of negotiations, the union is doing something it hasn’t done in a very long time. Inspired by the Teamsters, the UAW is conducting a contract campaign, with rallies, practice pickets, and all.

To discuss all this and more, we spoke with two UAW activists in Metro Detroit. Luigi Gjokaj was an assembly worker at Stellantis since 2010 and is the newly elected vice president of UAW Local 51. Jessie Kelly is a skilled moldmaker at General Motors and alternate committeeperson at UAW Local 160.

You’ll also hear from auto workers in Metro Detroit and Chicago, who attended rallies and practice pickets to drum up unity before the strike deadline.