Unions Are Not Adjuncts of the Democratic Party

Way too often, union actions are framed entirely within the idea that their number one job is to support the Democratic Party and its goals. We are seeing this all the time right now, all because the United Auto Workers has not yet endorsed Joe Biden. But the UAW is holding out because they want the end of the two-tiered wage system (which Obama completely let expand during the 2009 bailout that the unions acquiesced to and got nothing in return) and to include more EV facility under presently unionized facilities to at the very least keep union membership the same, if not expand it. These are reasonable goals for any union in bargaining with recalcitrant employers. However, as we see in this Politico piece, the lack of early support for Biden is being famed as destroying the climate.

But if the union is readying itself for a no holds barred strike, why is it also doing the industry’s dirty work? On one key issue, the UAW has aligned itself closely with the executives it otherwise denounces: resistance to the crucially needed clean energy transition. It’s an embarrassing move that highlights the union’s short-term thinking, not just in light of the climate crisis, but because of the union’s own environmentalist roots and clear understanding that an electric future is coming.

Already, executives have been quietly endeavoring to solidify an arbitrary dichotomy of electric batteries vs internal combustion engines (ICE) by echoing a key strategy from Tesla. Elon Musk built his EV juggernaut in part by lobbying state houses across the nation for permission to sidestep state dealer franchise laws that threatened to thwart its dealer-free, direct-to-consumer sales model, arguing that electric cars were somehow different than gasoline-powered ones. The big American automakers have floated to analysts the same approach for their electric vehicles, hoping to gin Tesla-crazed markets and add the luster of extra-profitability — and in doing so, permanently recast relations with their dealers and, now, it seems, their unions.

The union’s ambivalence toward a clean energy future was made strikingly clear when the historically pro-Democrat UAW refused to endorse, for now, President Joe Biden’s re-election bid. The decision came afterthe White House’s announcement of a $9.2 billion Department of Energy loan guarantee to Ford Motor Co. to help build a massive battery plant, BlueOval City, in Stanton, Tennessee, a so-called right-to-work state. The loan contains no language requiring Ford or its joint venture partner, South Korea’s SK On, a unit of a Korean chemical company, to ensure union involvement. Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, by contrast, was accompanied by specific promises to boost union job creation.

UAW officials worry, not without cause, that Ford, GM and Stellantis will use electrification and joint ventures like Ford’s to do an end run around the union that’s represented Ford’s workers since 1941 — just asparts suppliers now make parts the companies once manufactured themselves, with lower-paid, non-union workers. The jobs in Stanton will be “low road,” UAW president Shawn Fain predicted; Ford responded that wages paid will be “competitive,” which in a right-to-work state promises to be less encouraging than it’s meant to sound.

For the record, while refusing to endorse Biden as yet, Fain has told his union that another Donald Trump presidency would be “a disaster.” Yet Trump himself has seen enough of an opening that he was moved to make a 3-minute campaign video where he inveighed with characteristic eloquence, “I hope United Auto Workers is listening to this, because I think you better endorse Trump because I’m going to grow your business and they are destroying your business. They are absolutely destroying your business.”

Though it has genuine reason for concern over a net loss of jobs going forward — electric cars have fewer moving parts and require fewer workers to build than cars with the traditional internal combustion engine — the union claims it antipathy here is towards the non-union aspect of the new battery and EV factories not the technology itself.

And they are correct, but again, despite actually saying this, the framing still remains effectively anti-union:

Sadly, this same unspoken but primary allegiance to the industry’s own retrograde strategies resurfaced again last month when the UAW implored the Biden administration to dramatically water down proposed vehicle emissions rulings that would effectively require battery power for two-thirds of all new vehicles by 2032. Indeed, a trade association representing the American brands had already deemed the Biden proposals “neither reasonable nor achievable,” while Toyota Motor called the EPA proposal “extreme and outside historical norms.” Well, of course they are, one might point out, as are the extreme weather patterns and other devastating effects of excessive carbon emissions currently being felt.

Nonetheless, the regulatory proposals should be altered, the union urged the Biden administration, to “better reflect the feasibility of compliance so that the projected adoption of (zero emission vehicles) is set to feasible levels, increases stringency more gradually, and occurs over a greater period of time.”

Once again, the UAW has embraced the industry’s viewpoint that tough new rules will cost jobs. Perhaps because it’s an easier move to make than the long, difficult work needed to organize in some of the most union-resistant states in the country, a task that the Biden administration, despite its overt, pro-union statements, has shied away from.

The UAW’s reticence here is about jobs. And yes, the UAW has become somewhat captured by the culture wars. It’s not nothing in this decision making. But the reason the UAW is concerned is not an antipathy to electric cars. The union doesn’t care what kind of cars it makes. It wants union-made cars. It is rightfully concerned that a rapid expansion of EVs without union requirements means another round of Democrats not standing up for unions. Slowing it down may indeed be bad for the climate. You know what else is bad for the climate? Not making these union jobs. And Biden simply isn’t going there. He is not interested in forcing (or “forcing” more accurately) the companies to build these in union plants or to allow the union to come in and hold an election without any interference. Which gets to the other thing the article doesn’t mention–one reason why the UAW has not organized these non-union plants is that corporations have so captured labor law that even a friendly NLRB can do very little to stop a huge anti-union campaign, as Starbucks has so clearly demonstrated.

So given all of this, why should the UAW rush out and endorse Joe Biden? Perhaps they should–wait for it–demand Biden do something for the UAW first. That’s called representing your workers.