Without Class Struggle, the Inflation Reduction Act Will Be Bad for Autoworkers
The Inflation Reduction Act is driving the shift to EV manufacturing. That threatens to be bad for autoworkers — unless they fight to make sure EV jobs are good, as the UAW did with its recent strike.
I have a feature in the new print issue of Dollars & Sense on the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The piece looks specifically at the implications of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act for the transition, as well as the recent United Auto Workers’ strike against the Big Three automakers. (The article is only available in print, so please order a copy of the issue, or better yet subscribe to Dollars & Sense.)
My basic argument is that the transition from traditional auto to EV manufacturing threatens to be bad for autoworkers if workers do not fight to unionize and win better pay and conditions in EV plants. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is turbo-charging the shift to EV construction by providing tax credits to consumers and government entities for the purchase of electric vehicles, and tax credits for companies that are manufacturing EVs.
Yet EV plants, unlike those making conventional automobiles, are almost entirely nonunion, and EV jobs typically pay significantly less than their traditional counterparts. Until the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) most recent agreement, for instance, General Motors workers in conventional auto manufacturing would start at $18 and progress up to $32 an hour, while workers at GM’s EV battery production plant in Lordstown, Ohio, made as little as $15 an hour. Autoworkers at battery plants more broadly earn an average of $17 to $21 per hour. Electric vehicle work also tends to be quite dangerous, due to the chemicals involved in battery production.
The IRA, unfortunately, does little to address these problems. It does not require that EV manufacturers who receive government largesse use union labor, nor does it even impose wage standards. By speeding the transition to EV auto manufacturing jobs without such conditions, then, the Biden administration and Democrats are in effect worsening the situation of autoworkers — flying in the face of the administration’s claims to be “restoring the middle class.”
That’s one reason why the UAW strike was so important. The union got Stellantis and General Motors to agree to put its EV battery plants under the UAW’s master agreement with those companies, bringing previously nonunion workers under the contracts. (The UAW also achieved a major step toward unionizing workers at two Ford battery plants now under construction.) And as retired autoworker Dianne Feeley has argued, other contract victories — like the restoration of cost-of-living adjustments and the elimination of wage tiers — will hopefully inspire nonunion EV workers to join the UAW.
The strike shows that whether the EV transition is good for autoworkers depends on what they can win for themselves through shop floor fights. It also depends on whether policymakers start imposing actual conditions on EV funding to support union organizing and good wages, as UAW president Shawn Fain has demanded. It depends, in other words, on class struggle.