electric vehicles

By Union Jake, Isabella Escalona, Amy Stager, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 7, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 4, 2023

By Union Jake, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 4, 2023

By Sydney Ghazarian - Labor Network for Sustainability, December 1, 2023

Through bold strategy and collective action, United Auto Workers (UAW) have won historic gains in their 2023 contracts with the Big 3 Auto companies– gains that turned the tide against an unjust transition to electric vehicles and demonstrated that climate progress and economic justice can and must be won in tandem.

UAW’s ratified contracts with the Big 3 include:

• Provisions for expanding unionized EV work. The agreement with General Motors includes a commitment to future battery plants being included in the national agreement with UAW – meaning they will be good union jobs. Other contracts include guarantees for lower barriers to unionization at specific battery plants and commitments to the expansion of EV production already being done by unionized workers at existing plants.
• A 25% wage increase, including an 11% bump in the first year plus restoration of cost-of-living adjustments.
• An end to wage tiers that kept some employees at lower pay than others — a historic and important win for ensuring that EV work is both high-paying and union.
• An end to permanent ‘temporary’ employee status, with temps converting to full employment status after 9 months of work. This win will result in thousands of temporary employees who have spent years working at the company being able to reap the pay and benefits of employment status as soon as the contract is ratified.
• The right to strike over plant closures at all three automakers, which will provide the UAW critical leverage against the Big Three shipping jobs to anti-union states and overseas.
• Reopening the Belvidere Assembly Plant to manufacture EV batteries and serve as a parts depot — one of the only Big Three plants ever reopened after a closure
• The Stellantis agreement includes a moratorium on outsourcing, as well as product and investment commitments, giving workers significant leverage over corporate decision-making.
• Many critical provisions that provide protection for employees during transitions, such as allowing some employees to maintain their seniority from closed or idled plants, transfer rights, and increased moving allowance. 
• Many significant investments in providing a safety net for workers during a transition, such as increased investment in retirement, tuition assistance, and a year of healthcare coverage following indefinite layoffs.
• The contract will expire on April 30, 2028 so that workers can strike on May 1st- International Workers Day. President Fain has called on other unions to align their contract expiration dates, as to maximize their collective power.

The UAW Solidarity Committee– which consists of climate and social movement organizations and is coordinated by the Labor Network for Sustainability– created a brief on the UAW strike outcomes to share with movement partners. You can read more here.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, November 30, 2023

“The company knows that Toyota workers are watching,” said Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on November 3. “And when the time comes, Toyota workers and all non-union auto workers are going to be ready to stand up.”

That time has come—yesterday the UAW announced its plan, already in motion, to organize the whole auto sector. “Workers across the country, from the West to the Midwest and especially in the South, are reaching out to join our movement and to join the UAW,” said Fain in a new video.

The union says thousands of workers have reached out asking for support in unionizing their auto plants. They’ve scoured the old websites from previous union drives and filled out forms to be put in touch with an organizer.

“To all the auto workers out there working without the benefits of a union: Now it’s your turn,” he said, inviting auto workers to join the organizing push and telling them where they can electronically sign union cards, at UAW.org/join.

Thousands of non-union auto workers are already organizing across the 10 foreign-owned transplants, including Toyota, Hyundai, and Mercedes, as well as in the electric vehicle sector at Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid. Overall, the organizing drive will cover 150,000 workers—roughly the same number of workers covered under the Big 3 contracts—across 13 automakers.

By Nick French - In These Times, November 28, 2023

From its novel strategy to unprecedented contract wins, the United Auto Workers strike made history. The walkout suggests a broader revival of class struggle and workplace democracy.

On Nov. 20, the United Auto Workers announced that members had approved new contracts with General Motors, Stellantis and Ford by 64% following the union’s six-week strike against the Big Three U.S. automakers. 

The contracts at the three automakers represent historic victories. Across all three companies, the UAW achieved a 25% increase in base wages over the four-and-a-half-year contract span — more than workers had won over the previous 20 years — while also eliminating wage tiers and reinstating cost of living increases that had been given up during the Great Recession. 

Importantly, the union also won the right to strike against plant closures. Stellantis and General Motors, meanwhile, have agreed to bring their joint-venture battery plants under the union’s master agreement, ensuring that EV workers receive wages and benefits comparable to workers in traditional auto manufacturing. The UAW also forced Stellantis to agree to reopen the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Belvidere, Illinois, that it had shuttered earlier this year. And at GM and Stellantis, the union additionally won the right to strike if the automakers break promises not to outsource certain aspects of production, or if they violate product and investment commitments at various plants. 

Even more than the significant wage and benefit gains, forcing the reopening of a closed plant and winning the right to strike over investment decisions may be the union’s most important contract victories. They represent workers asserting control over something that management has long regarded as its exclusive prerogative.

Perhaps as important as the contract wins was how they were won. Breaking with decades of the union’s history of concessions and corruption, recently-elected President Shawn Fain and other UAW leaders made ambitious demands and clearly communicated them to members and to the public. And the union has not shied away from the language of class war, with Fain denouncing the greed of the CEOs in biblical language and declaring that autoworkers were fighting ​“for the good of the entire working class.”

The militant strike and its victories suggest the revival of a vision of economic life that has been largely sidelined in the United States in recent decades. That vision sees workers as entitled to a real say over their workplaces, where they spend much of their working lives.

By Steve Hanley - Clean Technica, November 30, 2023

The United Auto Workers just pulled off one of the most successful strikes in history. In a carefully coordinated campaign that targeted the most profitable factories at GM, Ford, and Stellantis simultaneously, the union won historic wage increases coupled with strong gains in job security and benefits.

Emboldened by its success, the UAW now seeks to add workers at Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, Subaru, Mazda, Lucid, Rivian, and Tesla. Especially Tesla. In a press statement, the UAW said on November 29, 2023 that autoworkers at more than a dozen non-union automakers have announced simultaneous campaigns across the country to join the UAW. Thousands of non-union autoworkers are signing cards at the new UAW web page, UAW.org/join, and are publicly organizing to join the UAW. The organizing drive will cover nearly 150,000 autoworkers across at least thirteen automakers.

By Hamilton Nolan - In These Times, November 30, 2023

Regular people who are not directly involved in the labor movement often find it hard to get interested in stuff that is happening at unions. Here is the short chain of reasoning I use to explain why they should care: What is the biggest underlying problem in America? Inequality. What is the single most potent and plausible weapon against inequality? Labor unions. What do labor unions need to do to actually roll back inequality in a way that would improve your life? They need to organize millions of new working people. 

So while it is understandable that the average person who is not in a union sees the topic of ​“union organizing” as some esoteric niche unrelated to them, that is not the case. This is the path to fix the whole fucking country. When people feel like this doesn’t affect them, well — that’s just an indicator of the problem.

The next question in this chain is: What will it take for unions to organize at the scale that we need? There are some practical answers to this question — it will take money, it will take organizers, it will take a structure conducive to keeping the money flowing towards organizing. But there is a more basic answer, that captures what has been lacking during the post-Reagan decades of declining union power: It will take ambition. Ambition!

Large parts of the union establishment still carry the sheepish look of a dog that has been beaten down for years. Living in a state of permanent decline, a life spent playing defense, has sapped them of the belief that things can be different. Their goals have gotten modest. Modest goals won’t get us where we need to go. We need to think big. The labor movement needs, before anything, genuine ambition for a new America. Rather than gazing at the scale of the problem and concluding that it is impossible, we need labor leaders who see their jobs as climbing mountains no matter how high they are. Ambition is the most precious quality of all.

That is why yesterday’s announcement from the United Auto Workers that they are launching a campaign to unionize more than a dozen non-union automakers at once is so important. The UAW knows that the biggest threats to its long term industrial power are the rise of big non-union auto companies like Tesla, and the fact that the auto industry has long been able to move plants to anti-union southern states in order to operate union-free. If left unchecked, those two trends will drain the UAW like a vampire, leaving it a hollow shell of a once-mighty institution. 

By Union Jake, Hamilton Nolan, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, November 30, 2023

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, November 29, 2023

Days after unionized workers at the Big Three automakers voted to ratify their new contracts—secured after the United Auto Workers staged an innovative "stand up strike" that lasted six weeks—the union made clear on Wednesday it has no plans to stop its fight for economic justice for thousands of workers at car manufacturing plants across the United States.

Urging all autoworkers in the U.S. to "stand up," the UAW launched what pro-labor media organization More Perfect Unioncalled "the largest organizing drive in modern American history," aiming to bring 150,000 employees at 13 nonunion auto companies into the union.

The UAW announced its campaign with the launch of a new website detailing the skyrocketing profits and CEO pay at firms including Germany's Volkswagen and Mercedes; Japanese and Korean manufacturers Toyota, Hyundai, and Mazda; and U.S. electric car companies Tesla and Lucid.

At Toyota, for example, top executives have enjoyed a 125% increase in pay as profits have soared 30% in the last decade—but the company is firmly against unionization, offering a 9% raise to nonunion workers shortly after the UAW secured its new contracts, which include a 25% raise over the four-and-a-half year agreement.

Tesla, headed by the world's richest man, Elon Musk, has doubled its U.S. production since 2020, but the company also remains staunchly anti-union—and Mercedes' profits have grown by 200% in recent years, but this year the company "spent $1.9 billion on stock buybacks instead of sharing those record profits with their workforce," said the UAW.

In a video posted on the union's website, UAW president Shawn Fain urged workers at the 13 nonunion manufacturers to "stand up and win [their] fair share."

"We've shown the world that this industry is harming workers and consumers to the benefit of company executives and the rich—and it's time that the working class did something about it," said Fain. "To all the autoworkers out there working without the benefit of a union, now it's your turn."