Posts tagged autoworkers
Opinion: Biden says he’s most pro-union president ever. But his policies hurt striking UAW workers
October 2, 2023 // Unfortunately, UAW leadership continues to advocate for their own best interests. Those who have worked in the auto industry know that negotiations must walk a fine line. If the Big Three have to file for bankruptcy protection, as General Motors and Chrysler did in 2009, all autoworkers are in a much more precarious position. UAW leadership has a responsibility to preserve their members’ jobs − securing raises that will improve their members’ standards of living, but that are not so excessive they threaten workers’ long-term job security. Moving forward, UAW leadership should target the real problem: Bidenomics. The UAW supported Biden in 2020 and enthusiastically endorsed his Inflation Reduction Act, despite the fact that it included electric vehicle subsidies that are accelerating the elimination of union jobs.
Over 11,000 L.A. workers plan to strike, hoping to ‘shut down’ city
August 8, 2023 // Mayor Karen Bass (D) said Saturday that the city is committed to ensuring a fair contract for its workers. “City workers are vital to the function of services for millions of Angelenos every day and to our local economy. They deserve fair contracts and we have been bargaining in good faith with SEIU 721 since January,” Bass said. “The City will always be available to make progress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” Los Angeles International Airport and the Port of Los Angeles did not return requests for comment regarding the possible disruptions to their operations that the strike could cause.
Biden pushes a strong role for unions in tech jobs, even as potential strikes are on the horizon
July 20, 2023 // Biden spent part of this week focused on efforts to expand unionization into new industries. On Monday, he met with younger workers trying to unionize at Starbucks, minor league baseball, bus-maker Blue Bird and Sega. Labor Department data shows that workers younger than age 35 are much less likely to belong to a union than their older peers, meaning that the future of the union movement might depend on bringing in younger generations. Unions also aided Biden’s election victory over President Donald Trump in 2020. Just 16% of voters in 2020 lived in a union household. But 56% of people in union households backed Biden for president against Trump, a Republican, according to AP VoteCast. Union votes generally matter more in Northern states with an industrial legacy such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, key states for a Democrat seeking to win the electoral college. But there are few union votes in sunbelt states such as Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, where Biden hopes to compete in 2024 and where many of the investments in new computer chip and battery plants are being made.
Op-Ed: Sherk: Proposed EV mandate will cost thousands of jobs
July 18, 2023 // he America First Policy Institute used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to estimate how many auto-manufacturing jobs the Biden Administration’s proposed EV mandate would cost. Our model produces estimates similar to prior studies for less-aggressive EV targets. The model finds that this stricter mandate — pushing EVs to two-thirds of U.S. vehicle sales — would eliminate about 120,000 auto-manufacturing jobs. Those job losses would be concentrated in the Midwest. Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio are the heartland of U.S. automobile production. These three states account for more than two-fifths of U.S. auto workers. As Lawrence Burns, the former VP for Research and Development at General Motors, has explained, the EV-induced “employment ramifications for states like Michigan and regions like southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio are really going to be a big deal.”
Union membership grows the fastest of any state in Tennessee over the past two years
January 24, 2023 // The number of Tennessee workers belonging to labor unions has grown over the past two years at the fastest rate of any state in the country. Fueled by a growth in unionized government employees, building trades and autoworkers, union membership in Tennessee jumped by more than 39% from the pandemic low in 2020 to reach 163,000 members last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For all its gains, however, organized labor still represents only a fraction of workers in Tennessee, especially in the private sector. Last year, 5.5% of all workers across Tennessee were union members, or only about half of the 10.1% share of workers nationwide who belong to a labor union, according to the statistics bureau.