In recent years, the Big Three and the UAW have each said EVs might involve far fewer labor hours than their gas-powered siblings, because they involve fewer parts and more straightforward mechanics. But following Tesla Inc.’s lead, automakers have been bringing electric jobs in-house. And in 2022 researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, working with proprietary data from auto suppliers and leading manufacturers, concluded that the hundreds of steps involved in creating EVs could actually require more jobs per car, “at least in the short to medium term.” Some would be familiar (forklift drivers); others would involve bringing in house the kinds of jobs that are done today by outside parts makers, such as building motors and battery packs; still others would involve babysitting machines that churn out battery cells.
Team Biden is counting on this more recent model to continue gaining traction. “Auto companies are now more incentivized to take on ‘build’ rather than ‘buy’ strategies for their supply chains,” White House senior adviser Gene Sperling said in an email.
What this all means for US auto workers will depend on how many of those tasks eventually get automated or outsourced, how much say employees have about the quality of new jobs, and whether they get trained for them. Fain says that so far, workers have mostly been left behind. And that has soured some members on EVs for the foreseeable future. Jim Howell, a 34-year UAW member working for Ford in Kentucky, says he’s convinced that EVs mean fewer jobs and that Biden’s pro-union message rings hollow as long as he keeps pushing electrics. But plenty of members say they welcome the shift, as long as it includes them. “I grew up with VHS tapes, we went into laser disc and the DVD,” says Michigan GM employee Vince Gusty. “Why should cars be any different?”
While UAW members are counting on Fain to make their case to the Biden administration, Biden allies who worry about Trump riding an anti-EV backlash back into the White House are looking to Fain and his new political capital. “He needs to spend it helping with this,” says Kate Gordon, a former senior adviser to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. Gordon acknowledges, however, that workers’ skepticism is earned—that for decades, including during the Obama years, when Biden was vice president, “we essentially let the bottom fall out of the supply chain” for green energy, exacerbating the advantages of competitors overseas.
As president, Biden has tried to do things differently. He’s signed into law hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, grants and loans for green energy initiatives, with various safeguards meant to ensure the resulting jobs don’t suck. Besides the incentives attached to the Energy Department’s August funding, the department has said agreements with unions could improve projects’ chances of getting government cash. And when the Ohio Ultium plant was seeking approval for a loan in 2022, Granholm twice called Barra to confirm employees there would have a fair chance to organize, according to the Biden administration. The union won, and the plant got its loan.
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