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UAW Strike Was Caused By Biden Prioritizing Climate Activists Over Auto Workers

March 14, 2024

  • In September 2023, Biden claimed that he wouldn’t be “worried about a strike” from United Auto Workers “until it happens.”

 

  • Once it happened the UAW’s leadership claimed it has been sounding a “string of alarms” about the Biden admin’s push toward electric vehicles, and had criticized the closure of older gasoline-vehicle factories.

 

 

      • In 2022, Stellantis ended production at a 58-year-old Jeep factory and laid off roughly 1,200 workers after it could not be converted to an electric vehicle facility.

 

      • EV production has made Midwestern communities that manufacture gas-powered engines and transmissions particularly vulnerable to layoffs.

 

    • Workers at new battery manufacturing facilities, one owned by Ultium Cells, were being paid “roughly half” the starting salary of what GM workers used to get paid at one former gasoline-car plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

 

      • According to a regional director for the UAW, David Green, some electric vehicle workers were “working two jobs to get by.” 

 

    • At the time, UAW President Shawn Fain said Biden needs to, “address concerns about the auto industry’s transition to all-electric vehicles, including concerns about job security, pay and organizing.”

 

      • According to Fain, the Biden administration had “actively” funded a “race to the bottom” in wages and benefits “with billions in public money.”

 

  • The UAW strike had a massive impact on the overall U.S. economy, with economic losses totaling over $10.4 billion.

 

    • Through Oct. 26, the end of the sixth full week of the strike, the Anderson Economic Groups estimate that OEM Workers lost $650 million in wages, Detroit 3 Manufacturers lost $4.3 billion in revenue, supplier companies and workers lost $3.3 billion in wages and revenue, and dealers, customers, and ancillary auto industry workers lost $2 billion.

 

  • Despite U.S. investments from the Inflation Reduction Act, China is massively undercutting domestic EV sales and holds an estimated $10,000 cost advantage per vehicle.

 

    • According to The Washington Post, a “fifth of China’s EV models were priced below $15,000 last year” whereas the cheapest EV in the U.S. today is GM’s Chevy Bolt, at about $27,000.

 

  • According to Axios, many of the minerals essential to EV battery production are primarily mined and processed in China.

 

    • China has positioned itself to “control a third of the world's lithium supply by 2025.”

 

  • According to Suzanne Clark, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the UAW strike and the “summer of strikes” was the “natural result of the Biden administration’s ‘whole of government’ approach to promoting unionization at all costs.”

 

  • According to PEW Research, half of U.S. adults say they are not too or not at all likely to consider purchasing an EV.

 

    • 59 percent of Americans oppose the idea of phasing out the production of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

 

    • Only 9 percent of U.S. adults currently own an electric vehicle.

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