Wages, benefits and job security may be at the heart of union talks with Detroit automakers — but the rise of battery-powered cars looms large in the background.
“Every auto job a good job.”
It’s a statement that United Auto Workers have been carrying on signs lately as the union and the Big Three Detroit automakers engage in confrontational negotiations ahead of a Thursday deadline.
The sign seems, at first, to have nothing to do with batteries — until you notice that the “EV” is bright blue.
It’s a subtle sign that while the contract talks are over wages, benefits, quality of life and job security, the auto industry’s seismic transition to electric vehicles is interwoven into all these topics.
Automakers — spurred in part by generous government tax credits — are pouring billions of dollars into developing and producing EVs.
And although EVs are not explicitly at the heart of the union negotiations, they are affecting them in all kinds of ways.
Here’s how.Both sides agree more EVs are coming
The debate is not about whether automakers should transition to EVs.
Automakers are committed to rapidly scaling their production of EVs in response to government and investor pressure to cut carbon emissions and slow climate change.
The United Auto Workers union is not trying to resist this transition.
“We support a green economy. You know, we have to get behind this. We have to have a planet that we can live on,” UAW President Shawn Fain said at a virtual rally this past weekend.
However, he said, the transition made it more crucial that both assembly line workers and battery workers (some of whom are unionizing with the UAW under separate contracts) have pay, benefits and guarantees as good as auto workers used to have.
“If we don’t secure this work and we don’t secure it at … Big 3 standards, it’s not going to be a good future for anyone,” he said. The Big 3 say the transition to EVs limits what they can offer
The UAW initially asked for more than 40% raises, as well as the return of pensions, cost of living increases and certain job security provisions. They cited enormous profits by the automakers and the hefty pay earned by the CEOs to make the case for big gains for workers.
