As of September 15th, the United Auto Workers, a labor union with 400,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is on strike in automobile manufacturing plants belonging to all the so-called Big Three U.S. automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler (now a subdivision of French-based Stellantis).
According to the online automotive news publication The Fast Lane, the strike targets the production of highly profitable models: the rugged Ford Bronco SUV, the high-volume and very profitable Chevrolet Colorado (and its clone GMC Canyon), and the Wrangler, made by Chrysler-owned Jeep. Notably, it does not stop the production of even bigger, even more profitable Cadillac Escalade, Ford Expedition, GMC Sierra, and Ram 1500.
In other words, the strike is well planned to send a strong message to the automakers, but also to the Biden administration: If the union’s demands are not met, they can shut down the production of some of the biggest cash cows in the entire auto industry.
The message to the automakers is about them sharing the large profits they have raked in recently. The UAW does not feel that these profits have trickled down to the men and women who assemble the vehicles. Formally, the UAW demands higher compensation in the form of an accelerated wage increase over the life of the next union contract, a new cost-of-living allowance to keep wages up to par with inflation, and a shorter work week.
The political message of the strike remains muted, but it is there. Let us return to it in a moment.
Strikes are not common in America, but they are also far from unheard of. Some of them are almost comical in nature, such as when the scriptwriters in Hollywood refused to write, or back in the 1990s when the graduate students at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) went on strike and refused to take their exams and write on their dissertations.
Other strikes have more logic to them, such as the current autoworker strike. That is not to say there is a logic to unions per se—they seek to monopolize the supply of labor which should be illegal under America’s antitrust laws—but given that unions exist, they should focus their work on what is best for their members. They should not participate in politics.
Historically, the UAW has not refrained from politics. On the contrary, they have been a close and powerful ally of the Democratic Party. With campaign donations and the rallying of working-class voters in solidarity, they have boosted Democrat candidates for all kinds of offices and helped build a narrative where the evil capitalists (their employers) have been perceived to support Republicans.
Previous strikes by the UAW, e.g., in 1999, 2007, and 2019, have been well-timed with key presidential elections.
So is this strike, but the implied political message in it is different. The ties between the UAW and the Democratic Party are not nearly as obvious anymore. As one conspicuous example, the UAW openly humiliated Democrat President Joe Biden by going on strike. Back on September 4th, Biden commented on the strike and stated firmly, “I don’t think it is going to happen.”
It gets worse: according to Bloomberg.com, the UAW is the only major labor union that has not yet endorsed Biden for re-election.
One of the reasons why the UAW is lukewarm in supporting Biden is the obvious fact that a large number of their members voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. American politics have undergone a fascinating transformation in the last 10-15 years, where more and more working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic party and voted for Republicans. Part of the reason is that the Democrats have shown contempt for established working-class values such as the traditional family, patriotism, and schools that educate instead of indoctrinate.
American working-class voters want the government to provide a safety net, but not of European dimensions. They want controlled immigration, not the open borders that Biden has allowed. After all, workers without college degrees are the first to be hit when low-skill immigrants flood the workforce and put downward pressure on wages.
As the Democratic Party has taken a turn for the absurd Left in recent years, all the way to the sexual mutilation of children in the name of ‘transgenderism,’ the American working class has remained firmly planted where it has always been. Donald Trump, a man often referred to as a ‘blue collar billionaire,’ showed up and spoke a language that resonated with them.
With working-class voters increasingly looking to Republicans on election day, the UAW simply cannot remain glued to the Democratic Party and expect to survive as an organization. With about 1 million workers in the auto industry, its membership ratio is already below 40%.
However, there are more politically charged reasons for the UAW to keep the Biden administration at arm’s length and not listen to its ‘predictions’ that a strike was not going to happen. From a superficial viewpoint, Joe Biden is, to date, the most environmentally aggressive president in American history. He is using the power of the federal government to try to regulate Americans out of cars with internal combustion engines, ICEs, and into electric vehicles, EVs.
The transition from the former to the latter is not driven by consumer demand; the regular car owner in America could not care less about EVs. In 2021, fully electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles accounted for less than 5% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. market; given the average price levels of EVs, about two-thirds of those sales would probably not have happened without generous government subsidies.
Given that consumers really do not want EVs, the Biden administration has to work extra hard to force the ICE-to-EV transition. This puts them at odds with the United Auto Workers, who see car manufacturing jobs vanish as a direct result of the transition. While there are no definitive numbers available, it is commonly believed that EVs require fewer workers to build. So far, the transition is too marginal to yield any reliable statistics, but regardless of what they actually look like, it is an indisputable fact that a significant portion of EV manufacturing is shifted out of traditional auto assembly plants and into mining and refining of rare earth metals.
Batteries in EVs consist of raw materials that are almost entirely mined and refined for industrial production outside of the United States of America. Unlike the production of ICEs, which can be handled comfortably with domestic raw materials, the ongoing EV promotion campaign is shifting a major part of auto manufacturing jobs overseas, predominantly to China.
Herein lies a big problem for the Democrats. No, their problem is not that they benefit Chinese state-owned businesses; after all, according to the bribery allegations against Joe Biden, the sitting president and his family have allegedly received large sums of money from China. No, they rely on workers in traditional manufacturing jobs to win elections in key states like Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.
The Democratic Party also relies on donations from unions. According to OpenSecrets.org, in 2022, the UAW donated $1,150,000 to the Democratic Senate Majority PAC, more than $405,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $840,000 to other entities affiliated with the Democratic Party. This $2.4 million is about half of the union’s total donations; the rest was spread out among an assortment of left-wing groups and campaigns.
It is very unlikely that the Democrats would lose all of this money overnight. It probably will not happen over the longer term either, but at the same time, if the UAW is stepping away from the Democratic Party, they may reallocate an increasing amount of their donations to what they perceive as ‘moderate’ Republicans.
If Republicans appear to be closer to UAW policies and preferences on issues that are key to the auto industry, then that reallocation can happen faster, and be far more consequential, than seems likely today. As one indication of how quickly this shift could happen, on September 4th Fox News reported:
Former President Donald Trump is calling for the United Auto Workers (UAW), the nation’s leading auto union, to make opposing electric vehicle (EV) mandates a key priority in ongoing labor negotiations. Trump said repealing EV mandates should be the UAW’s top, non-negotiable demand and that such policies would destroy the U.S. auto industry.
To date, the UAW has made no official mention of the EV issue in its motivation for going on strike. However, that does not mean it is not part of their negotiation tactics behind the scenes.
If they decide to take a stand on EVs, the UAW will necessarily have to part ways with the Democratic Party, which is completely gridlocked over this issue. The only way that the Biden administration, or any other future Democrat president, could stop the loss of auto-worker jobs in America as a result of the EV transition, would be to open up America for the mining of lithium and other rare earth metals.
Such mining would logically be followed by refining plants where the raw minerals are purified for industrial application. In order to make this happen, however, the president would have to work closely with Congress and pick a fight with the hardest left within their own party. That left is an unholy alliance of street-level activists in the more or less crazy save-the-Earth movement—known to Europeans as ‘Just Stop Oil’—on the one hand, and wealthy tech industry billionaires on the other.
The former may be a fringe, but they can be loud and destructive in isolated places, and they have experience with ‘green litigation’ to stop the extraction of natural resources.
The latter can write big checks for Democrat candidates for both president and Congress, or they can choose not to do so.
It is inconceivable that the Biden administration would go toe to toe with its own radical left wing. This means that current regulations and policies that hold back domestic mining will remain in place for at least as long as there is a Democrat in the White House. The fact that this means more environmental destruction in other countries is of no consequence to the hypocritical green Left, but they are not out to score points on logic. They want to look virtuous while holding a firm donations-based grip on the American presidency.
If the UAW actually does pick a fight with the Biden administration over the EV mandates, whether officially or not, it will be a signal to Trump’s presidential campaign that he can expect at least tacit support from the auto workers’ union in next year’s election. That would be a tectonic shift in favor of Trump—and a historic loss for the Democrat party.
How likely is such a shift? Not likely enough to count on in any election, but if we add the immigration issue to the plate, Biden and his party are going to have to fight very hard not to lose the support of the UAW and their members.
UAW Strike: A Challenge to Biden
As of September 15th, the United Auto Workers, a labor union with 400,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is on strike in automobile manufacturing plants belonging to all the so-called Big Three U.S. automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler (now a subdivision of French-based Stellantis).
According to the online automotive news publication The Fast Lane, the strike targets the production of highly profitable models: the rugged Ford Bronco SUV, the high-volume and very profitable Chevrolet Colorado (and its clone GMC Canyon), and the Wrangler, made by Chrysler-owned Jeep. Notably, it does not stop the production of even bigger, even more profitable Cadillac Escalade, Ford Expedition, GMC Sierra, and Ram 1500.
In other words, the strike is well planned to send a strong message to the automakers, but also to the Biden administration: If the union’s demands are not met, they can shut down the production of some of the biggest cash cows in the entire auto industry.
The message to the automakers is about them sharing the large profits they have raked in recently. The UAW does not feel that these profits have trickled down to the men and women who assemble the vehicles. Formally, the UAW demands higher compensation in the form of an accelerated wage increase over the life of the next union contract, a new cost-of-living allowance to keep wages up to par with inflation, and a shorter work week.
The political message of the strike remains muted, but it is there. Let us return to it in a moment.
Strikes are not common in America, but they are also far from unheard of. Some of them are almost comical in nature, such as when the scriptwriters in Hollywood refused to write, or back in the 1990s when the graduate students at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) went on strike and refused to take their exams and write on their dissertations.
Other strikes have more logic to them, such as the current autoworker strike. That is not to say there is a logic to unions per se—they seek to monopolize the supply of labor which should be illegal under America’s antitrust laws—but given that unions exist, they should focus their work on what is best for their members. They should not participate in politics.
Historically, the UAW has not refrained from politics. On the contrary, they have been a close and powerful ally of the Democratic Party. With campaign donations and the rallying of working-class voters in solidarity, they have boosted Democrat candidates for all kinds of offices and helped build a narrative where the evil capitalists (their employers) have been perceived to support Republicans.
Previous strikes by the UAW, e.g., in 1999, 2007, and 2019, have been well-timed with key presidential elections.
So is this strike, but the implied political message in it is different. The ties between the UAW and the Democratic Party are not nearly as obvious anymore. As one conspicuous example, the UAW openly humiliated Democrat President Joe Biden by going on strike. Back on September 4th, Biden commented on the strike and stated firmly, “I don’t think it is going to happen.”
It gets worse: according to Bloomberg.com, the UAW is the only major labor union that has not yet endorsed Biden for re-election.
One of the reasons why the UAW is lukewarm in supporting Biden is the obvious fact that a large number of their members voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. American politics have undergone a fascinating transformation in the last 10-15 years, where more and more working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic party and voted for Republicans. Part of the reason is that the Democrats have shown contempt for established working-class values such as the traditional family, patriotism, and schools that educate instead of indoctrinate.
American working-class voters want the government to provide a safety net, but not of European dimensions. They want controlled immigration, not the open borders that Biden has allowed. After all, workers without college degrees are the first to be hit when low-skill immigrants flood the workforce and put downward pressure on wages.
As the Democratic Party has taken a turn for the absurd Left in recent years, all the way to the sexual mutilation of children in the name of ‘transgenderism,’ the American working class has remained firmly planted where it has always been. Donald Trump, a man often referred to as a ‘blue collar billionaire,’ showed up and spoke a language that resonated with them.
With working-class voters increasingly looking to Republicans on election day, the UAW simply cannot remain glued to the Democratic Party and expect to survive as an organization. With about 1 million workers in the auto industry, its membership ratio is already below 40%.
However, there are more politically charged reasons for the UAW to keep the Biden administration at arm’s length and not listen to its ‘predictions’ that a strike was not going to happen. From a superficial viewpoint, Joe Biden is, to date, the most environmentally aggressive president in American history. He is using the power of the federal government to try to regulate Americans out of cars with internal combustion engines, ICEs, and into electric vehicles, EVs.
The transition from the former to the latter is not driven by consumer demand; the regular car owner in America could not care less about EVs. In 2021, fully electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles accounted for less than 5% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. market; given the average price levels of EVs, about two-thirds of those sales would probably not have happened without generous government subsidies.
Given that consumers really do not want EVs, the Biden administration has to work extra hard to force the ICE-to-EV transition. This puts them at odds with the United Auto Workers, who see car manufacturing jobs vanish as a direct result of the transition. While there are no definitive numbers available, it is commonly believed that EVs require fewer workers to build. So far, the transition is too marginal to yield any reliable statistics, but regardless of what they actually look like, it is an indisputable fact that a significant portion of EV manufacturing is shifted out of traditional auto assembly plants and into mining and refining of rare earth metals.
Batteries in EVs consist of raw materials that are almost entirely mined and refined for industrial production outside of the United States of America. Unlike the production of ICEs, which can be handled comfortably with domestic raw materials, the ongoing EV promotion campaign is shifting a major part of auto manufacturing jobs overseas, predominantly to China.
Herein lies a big problem for the Democrats. No, their problem is not that they benefit Chinese state-owned businesses; after all, according to the bribery allegations against Joe Biden, the sitting president and his family have allegedly received large sums of money from China. No, they rely on workers in traditional manufacturing jobs to win elections in key states like Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.
The Democratic Party also relies on donations from unions. According to OpenSecrets.org, in 2022, the UAW donated $1,150,000 to the Democratic Senate Majority PAC, more than $405,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $840,000 to other entities affiliated with the Democratic Party. This $2.4 million is about half of the union’s total donations; the rest was spread out among an assortment of left-wing groups and campaigns.
It is very unlikely that the Democrats would lose all of this money overnight. It probably will not happen over the longer term either, but at the same time, if the UAW is stepping away from the Democratic Party, they may reallocate an increasing amount of their donations to what they perceive as ‘moderate’ Republicans.
If Republicans appear to be closer to UAW policies and preferences on issues that are key to the auto industry, then that reallocation can happen faster, and be far more consequential, than seems likely today. As one indication of how quickly this shift could happen, on September 4th Fox News reported:
To date, the UAW has made no official mention of the EV issue in its motivation for going on strike. However, that does not mean it is not part of their negotiation tactics behind the scenes.
If they decide to take a stand on EVs, the UAW will necessarily have to part ways with the Democratic Party, which is completely gridlocked over this issue. The only way that the Biden administration, or any other future Democrat president, could stop the loss of auto-worker jobs in America as a result of the EV transition, would be to open up America for the mining of lithium and other rare earth metals.
Such mining would logically be followed by refining plants where the raw minerals are purified for industrial application. In order to make this happen, however, the president would have to work closely with Congress and pick a fight with the hardest left within their own party. That left is an unholy alliance of street-level activists in the more or less crazy save-the-Earth movement—known to Europeans as ‘Just Stop Oil’—on the one hand, and wealthy tech industry billionaires on the other.
The former may be a fringe, but they can be loud and destructive in isolated places, and they have experience with ‘green litigation’ to stop the extraction of natural resources.
The latter can write big checks for Democrat candidates for both president and Congress, or they can choose not to do so.
It is inconceivable that the Biden administration would go toe to toe with its own radical left wing. This means that current regulations and policies that hold back domestic mining will remain in place for at least as long as there is a Democrat in the White House. The fact that this means more environmental destruction in other countries is of no consequence to the hypocritical green Left, but they are not out to score points on logic. They want to look virtuous while holding a firm donations-based grip on the American presidency.
If the UAW actually does pick a fight with the Biden administration over the EV mandates, whether officially or not, it will be a signal to Trump’s presidential campaign that he can expect at least tacit support from the auto workers’ union in next year’s election. That would be a tectonic shift in favor of Trump—and a historic loss for the Democrat party.
How likely is such a shift? Not likely enough to count on in any election, but if we add the immigration issue to the plate, Biden and his party are going to have to fight very hard not to lose the support of the UAW and their members.
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