Who are we? UAW!
The mighty, might union! Scab!
It's time to stand up against corporate greed.
It's time to stand up for our communities.
That's Shawn Fain.
He's the head of the United Auto Workers, one of America's most storied unions.
And as you can tell, UAW family.
I'll see you on the picket line.
He's not happy.
Why? Well, his members are worse off and there are fewer of them
than just a few years ago.
And a new threat is looming in the form of a technology that's crucial
in the fight against climate change,
which unions fear will lead to even fewer jobs and lower pay.
Electric vehicles.
So on September 15th,
the union called a strike affecting all of the big three Detroit carmakers
Ford, GM and the company that owns Chrysler, Stellantis.
Big Three got plenty of money, give us some of that money!
That had never happened before.
It was a massive roll of the dice and could prove to be a make or break moment.
As the U.S.
heads into an election year, the future of blue collar workers
in America's industrial heartland is on the table.
In postwar America in the middle of the 20th century.
The auto industry really was the gold standard.
Auto plants provided opportunity and wages
and benefits that were unheard of for blue collar workers.
We're talking about an industry that really sort of
built the middle class in America.
GM, Ford and Chrysler controlled the American market.
There really was no competition.
So they could afford to give generous pensions, wages, health care benefits.
But things started to unravel in the 1970s.
I never thought I live the day
I have to start counting the gallons that are going into the tank.
As oil shocks sent gas prices soaring.
Back in 73.
The oil crisis.
We have to rethink what kind of vehicles that we want to sell.
It was much harder
for the domestic automakers because they used to sell bigger vehicles.
And Detroit wasn't ready.
Detroit didn't have the fuel efficient cars
that baby boomers were demanding, and they all turned to Toyota
and Honda, introducing the new front wheel drive Toyota Camry.
Things really came to a head in 2008.
In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession,
allowing the U.S.
auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action.
White House officials
say it may be a while before we get an announcement on a possible plan
to prevent the collapse of the troubled auto industry.
Bloomberg News has learned
they discussed a short term plan for keeping General Motors solvent.
The credit crunch meant customers couldn't get loans as readily, so sales tumbled.
As the Big three
fought for survival, with Chrysler and GM taking government bailouts,
they also turned to the UAW for help.
When this crisis hit.
The union had to give up so much to keep these companies alive.
And this was a matter of giving up
retiree health care benefits, giving up pensions, wages.
The negotiation was we take care of them and they were supposed to take care of us.
they had never given up this much.
And the amount of pressure on the union to bend to these demands was so great
that it really sort of undermined the union's ability
to organize more of the industry.
Over the subsequent 15 years,
the carmakers have done pretty well.
As profits have ticked steadily upwards.
They have been making an awful lot of money.
And the fact that these record earnings have been coming in for these companies,
after all of the things that workers have given up,
it hasn't sat well with workers.
They sacrificed a lot to
try to keep the company afloat.
And now the company is billions of dollars ahead,
they're not even trying to give them an inch.
And that's just not right.
Have a look at this chart.
If you take inflation into account, U.S.
autoworkers wages have steadily declined since 2007.
Compare that to Germany,
where wages actually increased in the decade leading to 2020.
Even as inflation had a negative effect on income,
real wages are still comparable to 15 years earlier.
That's largely because workers have a far greater say in the way
German companies like BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen are run.
At big German companies, the board is made up of 50%
labor representatives and 50% shareholder representatives,
and the swing vote is held by the chairman or the chairwoman.
So when the company falls upon hard times, management and employees
are incentivized to work together to find a common solution.
In 2006, Volkswagen faced a major crisis, with sales really dropping off a cliff.
Volkswagen slashed its German workforce drastically.
As hard as it was to stomach at the time,
it set the company up for success down the road.
Today, Volkswagen employs 125,000
more people in its home market than it did the year before the firings.
Getting rid of a lot of people, but in a socially responsible way
really helped to set up Volkswagen into the global
carmaking behemoth that they are today.
The advantages of the German system are that employees
and the shareholders pursue common goals, whereas in the US system
there is more agility in being able to react quickly
to new competitors and new goals.
Historically, that mattered less in the car industry,
where it can take seven years to go from conception to production.
But the shift to electric vehicles has already begun.
If you think about an electric vehicle, it's a very simplified vehicle, right?
There are less moving parts.
An internal combustion engine can have as many as 2,000 moving parts
while an EV powertrain has as few as 20.
It takes 40% less labor to assemble.
So that means there will be fewer jobs in those areas.
Carmakers are working with the unions to retrain
the existing workforce for the jobs that will remain.
But demographics may also factor into the equation.
The average worker in an automotive factory
in Germany is around 55 years old.
What does that mean?
It means they're going to leave the workforce pretty soon anyhow,
which is quite favorable for the carmakers,
because they will simply not replace a lot of these workers.
But the UAW is fighting to prevent
just that, the closure of factories through a process of attrition.
It is not necessarily a foregone conclusion
that the US will be able to make this transition
without some real casualties along the way.
The competition is stiff.
China is the biggest player in EVs, dominating not only batteries
but the supply chain of raw materials as well.
Chinese manufacturer BYD may overtake Tesla as the world's biggest
electric vehicle maker. But due to tariffs, the US slaps on Chinese cars,
the big threat to the American auto industry’s status quo is nonunion
battery factories like the one Tesla and Panasonic operate in Nevada.
With their own battery plants just starting to open, GM, Ford
and Stellantis fear that they'll operate at a serious cost
disadvantage if only their plants are unionized.
You've earned a hell of a lot more than you're getting paid now.
The impending presidential election has added urgency to the problem.
Now they want to go all electric and put you all out of business.
You know that, right?
EVs in the United States in particular, still account for fewer than one
in ten auto sales, but that is expected to change dramatically.
And by 2030, President
Biden would like half the vehicles sold in America to be electric.
Autoworkers helped create America's middle class.
So Biden is walking a tightrope between his self-declared
most labor friendly president ever and his green agenda. Those critical
swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Ohio.
These all have huge auto factory constituencies.
And Joe Biden took most of those states in 2020.
This is really an inflection point for the American auto industry.
The union is worried about losing membership and influence
and the automakers are worried about their very existence.
Electric vehicles and alternative
fuels will be pivotal in humanity's struggle to lower emissions.
The fight now is over
how long the transition will take and who will pay the highest price.