class struggle

By Daniel Boguslaw - The Intercept, October 10, 2023

Stellantis — one of the big three automakers locked in negotiations with the United Auto Workers — is mobilizing its internal diversity groups to provide volunteer labor at parts distribution facilities affected by the UAW strike, according to internal emails obtained by The Intercept. The communications marked with Stellantis’s Diversity and Inclusion logo seek members of the company’s Business Resource Groups, or BRGs, to help keep parts flowing to the automakers’ customers. 

Company officials put out a request last week for volunteers to staff its parts distribution centers across the country, particularly in Michigan. The Working Parents Network, a BRG, forwarded that call-out to its members, noting, “Each BRG will pick a specific day of the week/weekend to volunteer as a team.” The email continued: “Help continue to be the RESOURCE the BUSINESS can count on!” In another email, the parents group wrote that “Stellantis needs your help in running the Parts Distribution Centers (PDC) to ensure a steady supply of parts to our customers while negotiations continue. Working Parents Network has identified Friday, October 13 as WPN’s BRG Day at the PDCs!” 

The initial request — sent by Stellantis’s North America Chief Operating Officer Mark Stewart, and Mike Koval, head of Mopar North America, Stellantis’s parts subsidiary — came three weeks into the 150,000-member union’s strike against Stellantis, General Motors, and Ford. UAW President Shawn Fain has praised Ford for making good-faith progress and announced last week that General Motors had agreed to include battery facilities in the national UAW master agreement — heading off contentious battles over unionizing new electric vehicle facilities. Stellantis’s call for volunteer labor to break up the strike, meanwhile, comes as the company remains intransigent in the face of negotiations.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Working People, October 10, 2023

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 10, 2023

In a September op-ed, UAW President Shawn Fain and Congressman Ro Khanna say record auto profits should be used to address inequality and the climate crisis. 

“The climate crisis and income inequality are the two greatest challenges facing our generation. Both are being determined in the union contract negotiations between the United Auto Workers Union and Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.”

The electric vehicle transition, they write, “must be as much about workers’ rights as it is about fighting the climate crisis. Forcing workers to decide between good jobs and green jobs is a false choice. We can and must achieve both – and it can start with a fair contract for UAW autoworkers.”

The electric vehicle future must be union made. “We can have both economic and climate justice – and that starts by ensuring that the electric vehicle industry is entirely unionized and that EV jobs come with union standards.”

We will not let corporate greed manipulate the transition to a green economy into a roll back of economic justice. That money must be invested in high-road, green American manufacturing jobs that create broad-based prosperity for working class communities. 

“We’re mobilizing for a new model that puts working people, climate justice and human rights before profit.” 

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 6, 2023

A recent article in In These Times by journalist Sarah Lazare says, “Mainstream media coverage of the UAW strike has implied that workers’ demands stand in conflict with achieving climate goals. That’s BS.”

By Harold Meyerson - The American Prospect, October 9, 2023

The news last Friday that General Motors has agreed to the UAW’s demand that workers at GM’s joint-venture EV battery factories will be covered under the automaker’s master contract with the union is a historic breakthrough for American workers as they face transitions to a post–fossil fuel economy.

Until Friday, the U.S. auto companies were almost uniformly resisting the idea that their employees in the EV industry would receive wages and benefits comparable to those that UAW members had long received. Now, GM (and almost surely Ford and Stellantis, following in its wake) will effectively ratify the UAW’s argument that work in the new EV economy can provide the living standards that once enabled UAW members to thrive.

The UAW can now take that selling point to the workers at Tesla, and at the non-union EV factories springing up in the South. And President Biden can cite this breakthrough as a concrete refutation of Donald Trump’s harangues that the shift to EVs foretells the doom of American workers.

In announcing this epochal development, UAW President Shawn Fain said that GM changed its position on the eve of the union’s threatened expansion of its strike to the company’s huge plant in Arlington, Texas, which, Fain said, is GM’s single biggest revenue producer. The escalation to a key GM facility echoes the tipping point in the UAW’s sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, in 1937, which led to the unionization of most American manufacturing.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Working People, October 9, 2023

By Steve Hanley - Clean Technica, October 8, 2023

The strike by the UAW against General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis is three weeks old. Until now, little progress has been made toward a resolution, and the union has been relentlessly ratcheting up the pressure on the companies in order to get them to agree to its demands. Shawn Fain, the head of the UAW, doesn’t look like he could win a cage-fighting match with anyone under the age of 70, but his tactics are beginning to bear fruit for the 145,000 United Auto Workers members.

At the very heart of the labor dispute is a fear by union members that the transition to electric cars will greatly reduce the number of workers needed to build the cars and trucks of the future. An engine and transmission have up to 10,000 parts whirring around inside. An electric vehicle drivetrain has a dozen or less.

It doesn’t take a math whiz to figure out that machines that are less complex might need fewer people to put them together. That may be a flawed analysis, however. Most of those engines and transmissions are put together by robots.

The days of people with torque wrenches assembling engines by hand are long gone — although boutique manufacturers like Porsche and McLaren still use such tried and true methods for their premium automobiles. So the fears the workers have about fewer jobs in the future as the EV revolution moves forward may be overblown.

By Larisa Manescu - Common Dreams, October 6, 2023

WASHINGTON - Today, the United Auto Workers announced progress in their contract negotiations with one of the “Big Three” Automakers – General Motors – stating that the automaker has agreed to include battery production workers in the UAW contract, one of the key demands of the union.

Over 25,000 UAW workers have been on strike since the UAW contract expired on September 16. The Sierra Club, alongside many in the environment movement, has been echoing the demand of auto workers to ensure that the clean energy transition is a just transition.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:

“Today we celebrate alongside the United Auto Workers this major advancement in building a more just transition to a clean energy future. Tomorrow, we will participate in a Day of Action to keep the pressure up on the ‘Big Three’ automakers to deliver on all of the union’s demands. Ensuring battery production workers are represented in the UAW contract is critical to ensuring America’s transition to electric vehicles puts workers front and center. We are glad to see GM begin to deliver on a just transition, marking a significant momentum in negotiations. Now all eyes are on Ford and Stellantis to listen to their workers. It’s clear that the public pressure is working – onward!”

By Jonathan Lee - Climate Solutions, October 6, 2023

Autoworker strike underscores the need for a just transition

In addition to race, the clean energy transition is playing a central role, albeit unspoken, in the ongoing UAW strike against the “Big Three” automakers. While focusing especially on CEO-to-worker pay, the strike is not just about wages and benefits but also about the auto industry's future. As climate policies and investments help move the market and consumers’ desires shift toward electric-powered transportation, technology is changing, and workers need support in that transition. They are demanding that manufacturers commit to a just transition for workers. Given how EV production has already affected some auto industry jobs, workers want manufacturers to bring more development work in-house and commit to long-term competitiveness against non-union EV manufacturers, including union contracts covering future factories. 

While many industry executives have claimed that it comes down to either paying workers more or meeting the moment of producing more electric vehicles, unions have countered the misperception that such a trade-off is inevitable. “The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a prepared statement. “But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy.”