The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- John Furner
President Joe Biden on Monday backed off his full-throated support for unions by calling on autoworkers and the Big Three automakers to reach a deal in their dispute over the transition to electric vehicles, which are central to the president’s climate change agenda.
“I’m asking all sides to work together to forge a fair agreement,” Mr. Biden said in a statement that was more tepid than previous support of workers threatening to strike.
Workers are threatening to strike unless Ford, GM and Stellantis agree to pay United Auto Workers-level wages and benefits to all joint-venture U.S. plants making batteries for EVs. Workers at plants operated by joint ventures between the Big Three and foreign battery manufacturers earn far less than their counterparts who produce vehicles that run on fossil fuels.
The Ultium Cells plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which is operated through a joint venture between GM and LG Energy, pays workers a starting salary of $16.50 per hour. In 2019, when GM ended car assembly at that factor, workers were earning $32.50, according to data from the UAW.
The threatened strike puts Mr. Biden between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, he has boasted that his administration is the most union-friendly in history. On the other, he is aggressively pushing for the transition to electric vehicles to reduce America’s reliance on gasoline-powered vehicles that are a leading producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
UAW President Sean Fain is urging the Biden administration to amend federal incentives for electric vehicle manufacturing included in Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act and other federal legislation.
In his statement Monday, Mr. Biden urged the automakers to keep making the electric vehicles, but he also called on them to pay workers what they see as a fair wage.
Mr. Biden said he supports the transition to a clean energy future but urged automakers to ensure that “the transitions are fair and look to retool, reboot and rehire in the same factories and communities at comparable wages while giving existing workers a shot to fill those jobs.”
“The UAW helped create the American middle class and as we move forward in this transition to new technologies, the UAW deserves a contract that sustains the middle class,” Mr. Biden said.
The UAW has held off endorsing Mr. Biden’s reelection, despite giving him a strong endorsement in 2020. It also makes them an outlier among labor unions, scores of which have already endorsed the president.
If Mr. Biden is unable to secure their support, that could damage the big labor coalition that sent him to the White House in 2020. It could also create an opening for former President Donald Trump, who is openly seeking the UAW endorsement.
