“So, all those old plants are going to have to be transitioned out of operation or retooled to electrification.” “The auto companies are getting out of the internal-combustion-engine business: it’s just a matter of when,” Marick Masters, a professor of business at Wayne State University, in Detroit, told me. Although a recent study from Carnegie Mellon University researchers disputed this claim, industry experts say that huge changes are coming. production will require forty per cent less labor. Last year, Ford’s C.E.O., Jim Farley, said that E.V. With the transition to E.V.s accelerating-in California, E.V.s now account for a fifth of auto sales-older factories and their workers are potentially in the firing line. The White House has hailed these new investments as evidence that its effort to revive U.S. Lacking key battery technology of their own, Ford, G.M., and Stellantis have also set up joint ventures with South Korean firms to manufacture electric power packs. Since Biden took office, domestic and foreign automakers have committed tens of billions of dollars to constructing new E.V. “It’s time for politicians in this country to pick a side.” “I think our strike can reaffirm to him where the working-class people in this country stand,” Fain told CNBC last week. It is also asking Joe Biden, who proudly calls himself “the most pro-union President in American history,” to support its cause. The U.A.W., whose many members work in factories that make vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines, is demanding assurances that the Big Three won’t exploit the transition to E.V.s to eliminate union jobs and union contracts. Under programs that were introduced in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Biden Administration is providing generous financial incentives to automakers that invest in electric-vehicle (E.V.) plants. But their contract dispute also involves some fundamental issues about the future of the auto industry.
#BENEFITS OF A JOINT VENTURE FULL#
The autoworkers have asked for a four-day workweek at full pay and a forty-six-per-cent wage increase over four years, as well as cost-of-living adjustments and better retirement benefits. Recent years have seen a resurgence of labor activism, with strike threats from railway workers, UPS drivers, and other groups seeking to raise their wages and improve their employment conditions. “If we don’t get our justice, I can guarantee you one thing-come this Thursday at midnight, there will be action,” Fain said. president, dismissed the companies’ initial contract offers as grossly inadequate. Negotiations are ongoing, but in recent days Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. With just three days until their current contract expires, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand members of the United Auto Workers (U.A.W.) union are preparing to walk out from their jobs at the Big Three automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (the parent company of Chrysler).
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