Posts tagged subsidies
How unionizing hurt VW (it has nothing to do with wages)
December 19, 2025 // “You’ll find that the pay scales of the non-union automakers in these right-to-work states are pretty competitive with UAW,” Payne says — but in the ability to adapt to changing markets. Unions add a layer of management that makes it more difficult to shift production, change processes, and retool lines.
Federal shutdown heads for record-longest; local union says workers feeling financial pain
November 6, 2025 // Senators from both parties, Republicans and Democrats, are quietly negotiating the contours of an emerging deal. With a nod from their leadership, the senators seek a way to reopen the government, put the normal federal funding process back on track and devise some sort of resolution to the crisis of expiring health insurance subsidies that are spiking premium costs from coast to coast.
Top labor groups break with federal union’s support of Republican measure to end shutdown
November 4, 2025 // But many of the top labor unions told ABC News that they continue to back the strategy taken up by Democrats, breaking with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers losing out on pay and staring down the threat of layoffs. Many labor unions, a key bloc within the Democratic Party, support the push for an extension of Obamacare subsidies and remain eager to fight a president they view as an adversary of workers, some labor analysts and union officials said.
Op-Ed: Instead of subsidy fights, Georgia should allow ‘portable’ benefits
October 20, 2025 // Meanwhile, other states have taken the lead on the matter. Utah, Tennessee and Alabama have all formally recognized portable benefits as a form of independent contractor compensation. Georgia can be next by passing a safe harbor portable benefits model, which will cost the state and federal government zero taxpayer dollars. It simply clarifies that companies can contribute to portable benefits accounts if they want and doing so is not evidence of an employee/employer relationship.
Editorial Board: Volkswagen Gets What It Paid For
October 7, 2025 // Company culture is one part of the story. The German auto maker is used to working with unions back home, which take part in its governance and are usually less combative than their American peers. But politics may also have pushed VW to roll over. Thirty-three Senate Democrats wrote a letter in January 2024 to every non-union auto maker in the U.S., suggesting the companies would lose electric-vehicle subsidies if they opposed union campaigns. VW, which builds an electric SUV in Chattanooga, may have decided that fighting the union would be the costlier move. Now the EV subsidies are going away in any case thanks to the GOP budget bill and Trump Administration orders.
DOL heeds CEI’s advice on apprenticeship rule
December 10, 2024 // DOL seems to have been guided by whole-of-government directives as much as by its own statutory authority. Pages of the proposed rules pursued two objectives that the National Apprenticeship Act does not authorize: the promotion of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility and the imposition of demands on state agencies. The National Apprenticeship Act authorizes the secretary of labor “to cooperate with State agencies engaged in the formulation and promotion of standards of apprenticeship.” DOL apparently interpreted “cooperate with” to mean command.
Union leaders push for sports stadium funding from taxpayers
August 24, 2024 // Illinois Republican State Sen. Andrew Chesney told The Center Square this is a rare opportunity where progressives and conservatives come together. “The idea that we’re going to give these wealthy entities tax breaks is not something I support. The progressive wing of the Democrat Party actually shares in that position, which is why Gov. Pritzker is so hesitant to drive forward these proposals,” Chesney said.
Donald Trump Calls Tesla CEO Elon Musk ‘Greatest Cutter’ For Terminating Workers Who Want To Unionize
August 14, 2024 // “You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said in a 3-hour-long Spaces event with the billionaire entrepreneur. “I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike- I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, ‘That's OK, you're all gone. You're all gone.” The former President was seemingly referring to the termination of about 30 Tesla employees early last year in what was allegedly a response to unionizing efforts at its facility in Buffalo, New York.
Dem Demands On Automakers Could Backfire On Their Own Climate Agenda And Americans’ Wallets, Experts Say
January 17, 2024 // “EV cars require fewer workers to build,” Higgins told the DCNF, noting that greater union membership in the auto industry is probably not possible with a corresponding transition to EVs. “That’s just a fact. But that may not matter as much as you might think to the UAW. Believe it or not, only about 150,000 of the UAW’s 400,000 or so members actually work for Detroit automakers. The union has branched out into other areas, such as education, and those areas are growing… So fewer auto workers will hurt the union but not kill it.”
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.