President Joe Biden’s rush to embrace electric vehicles at almost any cost is holding back support from the United Auto Workers (UAW) as he readies a 2024 reelection campaign.
The union, which is based in Detroit and has about 400,000 members, worries Biden’s policies do not contain sufficient job security guarantees for its membership.
The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed the strictest tailpipe emissions regulation in the agency’s history. The proposal would require that up to two-thirds of all vehicles sold in the United States be electric by 2032.
Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour predicted in 2020 that candidate Joe Biden’s “zero emission” electric vehicle policies would cost thousands of auto sector jobs, while his broader energy policies could potentially destroy another 160,000 energy sector jobs, impede manufacturing operations, increase home heating expenses, and create California-style rolling blackouts in the Great Lakes State. Mansour noted that Biden’s rapid push to electric vehicles “would mean wiping out millions of jobs all along the supply chain for our automotive industry” due to the elimination of all the parts that comprise the internal combustion engine.
In a memo cited by Politico and sent to UAW members Tuesday, UAW President Shawn Fain said the union wants to see Biden push better wages and embrace broader benefits for workers at EV facilities as the White House rush to enforce EV’s gathers pace.
Fain cited factors like a battery plant that General Motors Co. is helping to develop in Ohio, where workers will start at $16.50 per hour, nearly half of what GM workers made at a nearby GM plant before it closed in 2019.
WATCH: Biden’s Interior Chief Unaware China Controls Minerals Supply Chain Needed for Electric Vehicles
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee“The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers. The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” Fain wrote in the memo as seen by Politico.
“We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”
“We were very adamant that if the government is going to funnel billions in taxpayer money to these companies, the workers must be compensated with top wages and benefits,” Fain said. “A ‘just transition’ has to include standards for our members and future workers.”
WATCH: Looking Ahead? Joe Biden Boasts American Auto Companies Will Be All Electric in “3035”
White HouseReuters reports the union boss said the union will be “ready to talk politics once we secure a future for this industry and the workers who make it run.”
Waiting for Biden concessions however does not mean the historically Democratic union is backing a Republican candidate, whoever he or she may be.
In the Tuesday letter, Fain noted “another Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.