Posts tagged General Motors
Opinion: A rebirth of the union movement in the US
September 28, 2023 // Biden’s action is consistent not only with his career, but with the current environment of discontent. Winning back Democratic enclaves in the industrial belt, which Donald Trump won by surprise in 2016, was essential for the current president’s victory in the 2020 elections. And it will be so again in 2024. The capacity for union organization and mobilization explains a good part of the progressive shift by large cities and industrial centers towards the Democratic Party. These are places without whose support one cannot reach the White House. The UAW has not yet endorsed Biden for 2024.
Donald Trump: UAW negotiations ‘don’t mean as much as you think’
September 28, 2023 //
Ford pauses EV battery project; UAW calls decision ‘shameful’
September 27, 2023 // The Marshall project, named BlueOval Battery Park, was a collaboration with a Chinese firm called CATL. Michigan lawmakers had granted the project about $1.7 billion in cash and other forms of corporate welfare. BlueOval Battery Park drew major scrutiny, from Marshall residents to officials in Lansing and Washington, D.C. The chairs of three U.S. House committees sent letters to Ford CEO Jim Farley to inquire about the partnership; two of those committees said they were investigating the matter themselves. Republican lawmakers in Lansing said Ford’s decision is a commentary on the state of Michigan’s business climate, electric grid and energy transition. “After failing to land other high-profile Ford deals, Gov. Whitmer gave away the store to bring Ford to Marshall,” said Republican House Leader Matt Hall, R-Richland Township.
Unions rebut claims green jobs will be worse for workers
September 26, 2023 // Automakers are in the midst of a massive transition to electric vehicles and other zero-emission models. While many announced voluntary goals of their own prior to Biden’s election, the shift is encouraged in part through federal tax credits included in last year’s climate, tax and health care reconciliation law known as the Inflation Reduction Act. Supporters of the transition say the issue at the moment is not one of job quantity. Job growth in zero-emission vehicles has significantly outpaced internal combustion engine vehicles, according to a report released this month by the nonpartisan business group E2. While the gas- and diesel-powered vehicle industry grew by 1.6 percent last year, the electric vehicle industry grew by 26.8 percent. Amid the transition, the UAW has expressed concerns that many of the jobs at these new facilities offer lower pay and fewer benefits to workers compared with jobs manufacturing internal combustion engines.
Ford announces pause on Marshall EV battery plant
September 26, 2023 // The company has commented that this site was meant to bring in 2,500 hundred jobs. The factory was set to start making batteries in 2026, with an expected output of enough energy cells to supply 400,000 vehicles a year. The state had allocated nearly $1.7 billion in incentives for the project. Following Monday’s announcement, Republican Representative Sarah Lightner, whose district covers parts of Calhoun County, issued a statement: “Gov. Whitmer threw $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars at Ford to bring its new EV plant to Marshall, but even that wasn’t enough to make the company turn a blind eye toward the anti-business climate the Democrat majority has created. Their far-left policies put more red tape and higher costs on businesses. The extreme energy mandate they’re currently pushing will raise costs even further while leaving large manufacturers like Ford worried about blackouts affecting their bottom line. If this keeps up, Michigan workers will pay the price as industries suffer and opportunities vanish.
UAW demands cost-of-living salary adjustment as Americans feel pinch of inflation
September 26, 2023 // COLA, or cost-of-living adjustments to paychecks, are well-known by Social Security recipients, millions of whom live on a fixed income and carefully track the yearly, inflation-adjusted tweaks to their benefits. But for anyone else, the pay bumps that were baked into many union contracts for decades have fallen away over the last half-century. The government has even stopped tracking data on them. The prominence of unions in the 1970s and '80s also helped COLA numbers. Data from the BLS shows that 20% of American workers were union members in 1983 ‒ the first year for which comparable data are available ‒ versus 10% in 2022.
UAW union files labor complaint against US Senator Tim Scott
September 24, 2023 // Shawn Fain, the president of UAW, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming Scott's remarks earlier this week violated federal labor law and in making those remarks he was in violation of the right to strike.
Electric vehicle jobs are booming in the anti-union South. UAW is worried
September 22, 2023 // “The auto industry’s move south hangs over these talks because now only a minority of workers are in unionized assembly plants,” said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University and author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.” While all of the Big Three’s plants are unionized, not a single plant in the South is unionized. Automakers’ transition to electric vehicles is accelerating these regional trends. Ford and GM are building battery plants below the Mason-Dixon Line, where states have laws that make unionization much harder than in the traditional working-class bastions of the Midwest. UAW leaders and union supporters worry the shift will lower compensation and cut out unions from the auto industry’s future, and they are seeking to address these concerns in talks with the Big Three.
Opinion: FACT CHECK: Does Unionization Have Positive Spillover Economic Effects?
September 21, 2023 // Most notably, a 2021 Harvard University report found that right-to-work states boasted more positive spillover effects. Compared to unionized areas, right-to-work (RTW) states boast 1.6% higher employment, 1.4% higher labor participation, and 0.34% lower disability receipts. The study also found RTW laws are “associated with lower childhood poverty rates and greater upward mobility”—with “children at the 25th percentile of the parental income distribution during childhood have a 1.7 percentage point higher probability of reaching the top income quintile during adulthood if they grew up in a RTW location.” Greater upward mobility is also observed in states that give workers latitude over joining a union or not. Moreover, right-to-work laws are shown to improve the well-being of both non-unionized and unionized workers.
Nearly 200 workers go on strike at Tuscaloosa Mercedes supplier
September 21, 2023 // The United Auto Workers said Wednesday that 190 workers had gone on strike at ZF Custom Chassis, a Tuscaloosa Mercedes parts supplier. UAW, which is engaged in a larger strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, said in an article published on their website on Tuesday that UAW members had rejected a contract offer from ZF. “These members of UAW Local 2083 supply front axels to Mercedes and have been fighting for a fair contract that ends tiers, raises wages and provides decent health care,” UAW wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. UAW Region 8, of which the Tuscaloosa local is a member, referred questions to UAW headquarters in Detroit. An email seeking comment was sent to the Detroit UAW on Wednesday morning.