A Just and Rapid Transition for the Auto Industry
Historic auto contracts could build momentum for climate justice—if my union, the UAW, embraces ambitious clean car standards.
Detroit, MI, USA - September 15, 2023: Shawn Fain leading a march of thousands of UAW members on strike (source: Shutterstock).
Last week, UAW officials announced that workers at GM, Ford and Stellantis approved new contracts, officially capping off the union’s historic six-week strike at the Big Three automakers. The deals have been rightly celebrated by the left as marking the beginning of a new era of ambitious, militant organizing for the US labor movement. What’s more, major wins for electric vehicle (EV) workers could help to build the labor-environmentalist coalition needed to advance a just and rapid transition—if my union, the UAW, aligns behind ambitious clean car standards.
The UAW’s contracts include ground-breaking gains that help make the shift to electric vehicles less disruptive for workers and grow my union’s stake in the clean auto industry of the future. Stellantis agreed to re-open a shuttered plant in Belvidere, Illinois to produce both combustion vehicles and EVs, and include 1,000 new workers at an EV battery facility slated to open nearby in the union’s national contract. Ford and Stellantis granted the union the authority to strike to prevent plant closures. At Stellantis, workers can also strike to uphold company commitments to produce specific products.
Winning these demands marks a historic first, harkening to former UAW president Walter Reuther’s push for the union to play a role in guiding production decisions to meet social and environmental ends. With new federal funding available to re-tool automaking facilities to make EVs, the new contracts will pressure companies to retain their current workforce as they transition to EVs, pushing back on right-wing efforts to scare workers into opposing the EV transition. And though neither Stellantis nor Ford followed GM’s lead by agreeing to extend the contract to workers at its joint-venture EV battery facilities, Ford acceded to a card check neutrality process that would incorporate them if a majority indicate they support the union, along with transfer rights for workers laid off from other facilities.
The left has rightly celebrated these victories as a turning point in the push for a just transition to a decarbonized economy. Throughout the strike, progressives and environmentalists have stood with the UAW, rightly rejecting the notion that strong contracts threaten to “crash” the EV transition. As Erika Thi Patterson, clean car campaigner at Public Citizen, told Politico, to win policies that quickly ramp down climate pollution, “[w]e need workers on our side.” Now, then, is the time for the UAW to embrace the policies needed to clean up climate pollution from the transportation sector.
Prevailing wisdom holds that EVs require less labor to produce, as they contain fewer parts than a traditional gasoline-powered vehicle. But with new research challenging that assumption, smart policy could even make the shift to EVs a job creator. Still, despite declaring support for the transition to electric fleets, fears of job loss recently drove the UAW's new firebrand President Shawn Fain to align with automakers and object to Biden’s proposed clean car standards.
Having voted for Fain as a member of the UAW’s growing ranks of academic workers and served as a Strategic Researcher for the UAW International, I was disappointed to read this news. I know I can never truly understand the concerns of autoworkers faced with the possibility that the EV transition could cost them their jobs. And I support every demand our union has made to make the transition as smooth as possible for workers. But in 2017, when a series of record-breaking wildfires began to burn down the homes of my friends, neighbors, and co-workers, and raze entire communities in Northern California where I have lived most of my life—it became painfully clear to me that we are not moving fast enough toward a climate-safe economy.
What’s more, Fain’s position is not just contrary to my own; it also goes against our union’s record of mediating conflict between environmentalists and auto employers. In the 1970s, the UAW helped finance Earth Day, lobbied Congress to push automakers toward electric and fuel cell vehicles, and persuaded lawmakers to adopt a compromise air pollution standard for autos. More recently, the UAW helped hold back a loosening of fuel economy regulations, and motivated lawmakers I worked with to propose a tax credit for EVs produced using union labor. Our union can be an influential force for climate protections, but only if we support a just and rapid transition.
Toward those ends, Fain is right to call for public money supporting the EV transition to be tied to labor standards. Without them, the billions of dollars in subsidies EV makers are receiving could help undermine the middle-class jobs autoworkers fought for and deserve—just look at Tesla, with its growing list of violations of labor and safety laws, deaths at factories in Nevada, Texas, Shanghai, and the Bay Area, and a culture of racist intimidation on the factory floor. These are the working conditions we must prevent from predominating in the green economy.
But Fain is wrong when he says that clean car standards that give us a fighting chance to meet our commitments in the Paris Agreement are “premature,” and should be revised to “increase stringency more gradually and occur over a greater period of time,” just as automakers are wrong when they say that the proposed guidelines are “neither reasonable nor achievable.”
To prevent the worst catastrophes of climate change, we must push automakers to rapidly transition to fully electric fleets (and, of course, also push lawmakers to expand public transit). And as our transportation systems electrify, we must support the UAW to organize EV workers throughout the industry and build more pathways to a just transition so that workers’ legitimate concerns about getting left behind do not clash with that goal. But for the UAW’s historic contract gains to be a win for climate justice, my union must use its influence to support clean car standards that reflect the urgency of the moment. Our livable future depends on it.
A version of this piece was previously published on Common Dreams. It has been posted here with consent of the author.
Jesse Strecker is an organizer, researcher, and coalition builder working to advance a just and rapid transition. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @JesseStrecker1.