Hyperdrive Daily: Will The Electric Revolution Be Unionized?

[TruckElectric]

The UAW EVs
President Biden is fond of saying, “I’m a union guy.” He’s also a “car guy,” as he boasted last week before racing down a test track in a camouflaged version of Ford’s new F-150 Lightning electric pickup.

Biden is making a big push to produce electric vehicles and batteries in the U.S. with “good-paying union jobs.” But the details of how that’s all going to work are still fuzzy.

While EVs like the Lightning or General Motors’s electric Hummer will be made in union assembly plants, the factories that make the batteries to power those cars are still an open question.

Last week, Ford announced it will build two new battery plants in the U.S. through a joint venture with South Korea’s SK Innovation. On the union question, Ford Chief Operating Officer Lisa Drake said the company’s labor strategy wasn’t defined yet. It’ll be determined later this summer, she said, once the joint venture is set up.

GM, perhaps wanting to remain in Biden’s good graces, especially as Democrats push for electric-car subsidies for consumers, took it upon itself to state publicly this week that the UAW “would be well positioned to represent the workforce” at its Ultium battery plant with LG Energy Solution. The companies plan to invest $2.3 billion to build a new battery plant in Tennessee, on top of the one they’re building in Lordstown, Ohio, near the site of a former GM plant.

LG Energy, an offshoot of LG Chem, said it stands by GM's comments. GM can’t unilaterally make a decision about a 50-50 joint venture.

Recent history has been less encouraging for labor. SK’s Georgia plant, which supplies batteries for the electric F-150 and Volkswagen ID.4, is non-union. So is LG’s factory in Michigan, which was subsidized by the Obama administration and sells batteries to GM and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler).

Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, which once hosted a unionized joint venture between GM and Toyota, is not a union shop today. While a blue state like California would seem to be fertile territory for the UAW, Tesla and the union have not been friendly.

Foreign carmakers in the south are an even harder nut for the union to crack. The UAW has lost two elections at VW’s plant in Tennessee, the latest in 2019. It also suffered a defeat at a Nissan plant in Mississippi two years earlier.

Despite the union’s rocky track record, President Biden is giving the UAW hope. Organized labor has been using its close relationship with the president to pressure the carmakers, especially because it’s concerned that non-union battery companies could replace unionized suppliers that make engine and transmission parts.

“Ford has a moral obligation, regardless of any joint venture arrangement, to ensure that the battery jobs that replace gas engine and transmission jobs are the same good paying union jobs that have fueled this American economy for generations,” the UAW said after Ford announced its battery plans.

The UAW “couldn’t have a better advocate in the White House than this president,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “But it’s still uncertain how this all plays out.”

SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

 

[Crissa]

The whole idea of voting in a Union and 'right to work' is bs designed to disempower workers. There should be a Union at each workplace by default.

Then the workers could choose how strong or weak it was, but at least the template would exist to negotiate safety and work conditions, and someone not the employer to handle benefits packages and labor law compliance.

-Crissa

 

[ajdelange]

Twentieth Century Motor Company

 

[Dids]

Labor unions are not all good. Why do I have to pay extra for someone else job security? And unions slow corporate adaptability. On the other hand they prevent a race to the bottom... what we need is a better labor market, maybe require public wage disclosure that way a person can make a more informed choice.

 

[TAG]

I don't know a whole lot about unions not having worked for one before. I do know that when I think of Legacy Auto I think of Unions at the same time. Having a GM plant in my town I also see companies that support GM just get crushed during Union strikes. I think Unions make companies less nimble and more bureaucratic . I'm not really in favor of them.

 

[ajdelange]

The best way to keep unions out is to offer your employees a better deal than they are likely to get in a union shop. Musk has, so far, been able to do that but when he points it out to his workers he gets his pp whacked by the NRLB. Welcome to America.

 

[DarinCT]

The United states has a default to states rights for everything that isn't federal. Unions become the centralized government for the worker negotiating wages, working conditions, negotiating the negotiating of the contract, litigation procedures, and more. If unions were able to get out of their own way and their own head, then they might not be on a slow downward trend for the last 50 years.

We're talking about autoworkers here. Teachers and police officers and a handful of other government related unions on the other hand have a different environment, i.e the entity isn't allowed to go out of business, and have flourished/calcified into their systems.