Odd Lots - What the UAW Wants From Its Fight With the Big Three

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

On September 14, the contract between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three carmakers (GM, Ford and Stellantis) is expiring — and the possibility of a strike is real. This comes at a delicate time for multiple reasons. The labor market is tight, which means workers have other options. Inflation is high. And the auto industry is undergoing a major shift to the electric vehicle market, which may change the composition and pay of the labor force. The stakes are high. So what does the union want and how does it fit into the goals of the broader labor market? To understand more, we speak with Dan Vicente, the director of UAW Region 9, as well as Alex Press, a labor reporter at Jacobin magazine.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is Caroline Hyde. And I'm Ed Ludlow inviting you to join us for Bloomberg Tech, a daily podcast focusing exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business. Every weekday, we bring you the top headlines from the world's biggest tech companies. From finance to defence, AI to entertainment and from startups to the magnificent seven. We highlight the latest stories of the people and companies pushing the tech sector to new frontiers and the politics that shape global tech markets. We do this all every weekday.

then bring you the most important conversations and analysis in our podcast. Search for Bloomberg Tech on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. Join us every afternoon on your commute home and stay ahead of the tech news cycle. That's the Bloomberg Tech podcast. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. And I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall.

And I'm Tracy Allaway. Tracy, you know, a few episodes that we've done lately from different angles has suggested to me, like, we really need to talk more about, well, the sort of the labor aspect of building cars. So the labor aspect of like sort of this renewed industrialization in the U.S. Right, because there is this whole discussion going on about whether or not the manufacturing process of EVs is significantly different to gas engine cars. And I think there's an ongoing debate about whether or not you need fewer workers in order to make an electrical vehicle rather than, say, a traditional combustion engine. Right. So, you know, this to my mind, so we just did this recently did an episode with Corey Cantor of Bloomberg NEF where we talked about this. We talked about it back in April at the econ Twitter event where there was a lot of talk about the sort of like pressure to drive down cause for batteries. But it also came up, you know, we talked to Jared Bernstein of the White House.

And I think there's this tension because obviously the sort of organized labor is this really important pillar of the Democratic Party and for the White House. And at the same time, there's this question about whether this push that the administration is making is going to leave a lot of workers behind or cost a lot of jobs as part of this transition. Right. There is this ongoing tension between wanting to create vibrant and competitive EV industry and battery making in the United States, but also attaching better work conditions to it for workers. Like, how do you actually compete against cheap labor in, say, China or Mexico when it comes to making EVs or batteries while sort of making sure that your workers have good wages, good living conditions, and all of that? And then, of course, there's the fact that the UAW, their contract with the big three automakers, GM Ford and Stalantis. I believe it expires September 14th. So that is a date that is fast approaching. And setting aside EVs and binomics and industrialization, all these things we talk about, this has been a sort of summer of intense labor action. It was a pretty intense contract negotiation at UPS with the Teamsters. Seems to have been resolved, averted without a strike. but there is a lot of labor activity that seems to be happening right now. Hot Union Summer, can we say that?

I'm sure it's been said. I guarantee it's been said. But this actually reminds me. I mean, one of the earlier episodes we did during the pandemic was about labor power in previous pandemics. I think we were talking about the great plague from the Middle Ages and what happened after that. But that was a big theme of that particular historical event, which is if you lose a big chunk, of the workforce, well, suddenly all the remaining laborers are empowered and they can start asking for better conditions. And so to some extent, you know, fast forward to 2023, we are basically seeing the continued outcome of a lot of the disruptions from the pandemic, plus some of these new efforts from the Biden administration. And the unemployment rate is low. There's still a lot of jobs,

and inflation is high. So people rightfully expect to have wages. Cost of living. improve their cost of living, so they're not falling behind. All right, many things coming together at once. So we really need to do an episode on exactly this topic. And I believe we have two perfect guests. We are going to be speaking with Dan Vicente. He is the director of Region 9 at the UAW. And we were also going to be speaking with Alex Press, a staff writer at Jacobin magazine,

who's been covering labor action for a long time. I always talk to Alex when I want to understand something that's going on with the labor movement. So Dan and Alex, thank you so much for coming. on the Odd Lots podcast. Yeah, thanks so much for having us. Yeah, thanks for having me, buddy. Dan, let me start with you. What do you do?

What does it mean that you're the director of Region 9 at the UAW? So I am the chief executive for all of the United Auto Workers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Central and Western New York. So we cover a wide range of sectors to include the auto sector, but higher education workers, cafeteria workers, casino dealers in Atlantic City, public defenders in Philadelphia County, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, all sorts of things. We represent all sorts of different workers throughout the three states. I want to get into some of the current goings on, I guess, with UAW.

But before we do, maybe Alex, could you set the scene for us in terms of some of these disputes that we've seen this summer? Like, what is generating, it feels like, more proactive union activity in 2023? I mean, big question. You know, there have been a handful of labor disputes that Joe mentioned in his introduction, where really in the past we would have seen unions and workers either accepting concessions or fairly divided over what to do in the face of employer pressure. And then this summer, we've really seen unity, unions going on the offensive. I'm thinking here specifically, of course, of the UPS contract that the Teamsters have just negotiated. The rank and file haven't voted on it yet, but the details that are out thus far suggest that UPS basically blinked, right? They offered, you know, incredible advances both in wages, working conditions. You know, as Sean O'Brien, the new president says, no concessions, right? Which is really different than how things used to be for labor. Obviously, similarly in Los Angeles with the actors and writers that are on strike, here again,

in all of these examples I'm giving, you hear a couple things. One is that, you know, there's a tight labor market still. Unemployment is low. Inflation is high. People have reasons to both sort of stand up and fight, as they often put it, or leave if a job is no good, right? I mean, during the pandemic, we saw high quit rates. And in part, that was about workers feeling confident that they could find better jobs elsewhere. And so the sort of the way people often praise it is that they used to be quitting and going other places.

and now they're staying and making their jobs better. And so we're seeing those, you know, going on the offensive, fighting for strong contracts where you do have a union, you know, fighting for a new union where you don't have one. And so I often attribute it to, you know, a couple factors here just to make it kind of a, in brief, I usually say that a lot of these workers, especially the younger ones, you know,

have kind of been radicalized in certain ways over the past 10 years. Bernie Sanders here is a big part of the story. story. When you talk to the young unionists, rather than the leadership, they'll often point to Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns is when they first sort of encountered class politics and this idea of, you know, the labor movement, what is a union? They didn't know. And then you get them going through the pandemic where things are sort of clarified as far as the lines and the risk, the amount of risk that workers face versus their employer. And you get people saying that they felt they had nothing left to lose. And so that's, you know, the interesting thing about the labor movement is that

runs on a slightly slower timeline than, say, electoral politics. So you kind of have to wait a couple of years to see what's going to happen, right? It's based on contracts. It's based on an extremely slow process of organizing a union. And so I would always tell people, as the Sanders campaign was kind of coming to an end in 2020, just wait a few years. And we will see what becomes of this. And I think all of those factors together, you get the picture of, you get the picture of what we've seen this summer. Long and variable lags in labor politics. Yeah, very, very well put.

So, I mean, as you say, okay, so the Sanders campaign sort of awakened people, maybe radicalized people. Dan, can you talk to us a little bit about how you got in your role? So I believe you were elected in March of this year the same time that the new UAW president Sean Fame was also elected. And I guess one of the words that, like, are there parties? are there tickets? Can you talk a little bit about that process? A word that I keep seeing is like more militant is a word that comes up. But can you describe like a little bit about like how that electoral process worked and what the people, your allies sort of pitch to as the UAW members, like what was your pitch to the members that said, okay, elect me instead of whoever else?

So yeah, we just had an internal election. A lot of the big unions across the country have had recent elections. And we've seen in pretty much all of the unions that there is new leadership being elected to these positions. I started in 2017 in a union shop and now I sit on the international executive. And the only reason that I am here being so new to the game is because there is a general feeling primarily from the younger workforce that the path into the middle class, the user exists for our grandparents and parents generation no longer exists. like Alex was saying, it used to be pre-pandemic that these companies could tell our employees, listen, we can replace you in a minute. After the pandemic, where we're all deemed essential, where we all had to work through the pandemic, we were deemed essential workers.

And coming out of the pandemic, we know the realities you can't replace us. And we are the essential workers. You need us to make the products that make you money. We don't need you as much as you need us. And so there's been an awakening in the labor movement. And the other part of that is, you know, there has been more radical political movements over the last 10 years, as Alex was saying with the Bernie Sanders left and stuff. But there's also a huge part of our workforce that aren't really politically partisan one way or the other.

What they do know is that their standard of living has gone down. Their lives are harder. And the companies we work for are making record profits. It's not a sustainable system for not just a, union or a company before a society. So there is a new generation coming up. And we are more militant, we're more militant because we've been waiting for politicians, one party of the other, to come and save us. And they have done nothing for us. So we are angry and we feel like we're going to have to do it ourselves. So just real quickly, specifically, when you ran for in Region 9 or when

your president, Sean Fain ran, like, what was your message specifically to the rank and file that you would deliver that, in your view, prior union leadership did not? It was a simple message. It was, I'm from the shop floor. Just four months ago, I was working two plastic extraders in Pennsylvania. I was a committee man elected in my local, but I had never had a position in the international. And my message to our membership within the region was the previous incumbents. I've become too comfortable with management. They've been around too long.

The union leadership has been around so long they've cozyed up to management. They've negotiated its concessionary contracts. And they forget what life and the struggles are of working men and women on these floors. And we have to run against the incumbency because it's easy to say that management has major lives harder and getting crappy contracts. It's harder to say that the union owns a part of that. We're responsible for that as well. And it's tough to look in the mirror and say our institution has failed.

but the new leadership ran on a platform and we're not going to continue to fail. If anything, the COVID-19 laid bare the inequities in our society and we're not going to continue to just, I don't know if I can curse in this podcast or not, but we're not going to continue to each shit. That's fine.

That's fine. You wouldn't be the first person to curse. You know, you mentioned dissatisfaction with previous union leadership a couple of times now, particularly from the sort of younger generation of workers. And one thing that I keep hearing coming up in context is the word tiering.

Can you explain what tiering is in this context? Yeah, so tiered wages were introduced in the Big Three auto manufacturing contracts during the recession. They've existed in other unions contracts for some time, but basically what it is, if you're hired past a certain date, whatever that X date is, you could be paid 10, 12, 13, 15, dollars less an hour than the person working right next to you that was hired on why date so depending on when you were hired dipate your wages so you'll never make the maximum amount of money as people hired before you you'll never get to the same benefit level

as the people before you and you could be in a tiered progression you could be what's called an improgression wage for up to seven years what was the rationale for that i i struggle to understand how that would ever really be accepted as fair But what were people saying? Like, what were the reasons? It was introduced during the recession. So during the recession, we were both forced and willfully took concessions basically to save the big three, you know, legacy auto manufacturers from not ceasing to exist.

They were in such a bad financial position that they could have collapsed entirely. So we, you know, we understand that the relationship's symbiotics, so we need them and they need us. So we agreed to the concessions, and that's when tiered wages were introduced. That's when cost of living adjustments were suspended. Well, the pensions were firms, all sorts of things. And as an institution, we were under the assumption that, yes, we have to make these concessions now to save our employers. We get that. But over time, we will build back, you know, over multiple contracts.

We'll get back inch by inch, but we were given up to get back to a level of wages and benefits that we had had pre-perselect. session, and it just turns out that in 15 years since then, they haven't given us a sentence. So it was inevitable that we were going to get to this point. On April 4, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of King. Cash app.

From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, The Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Alex, how corrosive, you know, when you talk to people across the different unions, UAW, but also otherwise, how corrosive, and I believe that UPS also had a tiered system, but how corrosive is that in terms of, okay, here's two members of the same union at the same company, very different sort of lifestyle and career trajectories due to this. pay trajectories due to this. And just generally this sort of like, I guess the way Dan described, it almost felt like a sort of like union leadership capture in which the members, the leaders, the past leaders of

the union feel like they may have just as much responsibility to the management to the company as the members of the union. Like how consistent are some of these things across the sort of multiple labor actions we're seeing these days? Yeah. I mean, I think you got to it a little bit in your question about tiers. as far as the corrosiveness. But it's very easy to imagine, right?

Like, you are on the assembly line or, say, for maybe your listeners, you are at the desk looking at your computer. At the keyboard line, clicking furiously, or quotas of clicks. Okay, keep going, yeah, sorry. Yes, and your coworkers on either side are doing the same thing, right? Assembly line or office job, whatever. But they are making double the amount you make, right? I mean, it's very hard not only to make sense of that, but also it's very hard to build any kind of trust and an organizing relationship with those co-workers, right?

It builds this resentment. It really corrods a union from the inside out, right? I mean, Dan was speaking to this that, you know, a union needs the rank and file to actually, one, view the union as something that they can trust and that is them that they lead, but also as some of the union. something that is going to, you know, sort of fight for equal pay, fight against sort of arbitrary boss discrimination. And a lot of workers will tell me whether it's at UPS, whether it's at the big three, whether it's anywhere with a tier, that this just feels like unequal pay for equal work. And obviously, that has a long history of being unacceptable. Also, it is often then racialized in that the workers who are in the earlier, the more recently hired tiers with lower pay are often more, you know, less white, more women. And so this really creates all kinds of problems within the workplace. And just one little example here is that, you know, UPS, when the Teamsters, we don't have to go into all

the machinations here, but the Teamsters ended up accepting a UPS contract during the last negotiations that's created a new tier of driver called 22-4s. That's the name of the clause in the contract that creates them. Is this the ones driving like in their own cars? Is that right? No, no, that's entirely different. 22 whores, though, were, so they had worse benefits, lower pay, you know, they topped out way lower than the permanent driver, the regular tier. And there was a huge uproar when this tenant of agreement came out during the last negotiating cycle. And the members, in fact, voted it down. Numerically, the majority rejected this UPS contract last negotiation rounds. But the younger Hoffa, James

Hoffa Jr. forced this contract through using a very arcane clause in the Teamsters Constitution. One that even, you know, when I would speak with very long time kind of militant, rank and file like Teamster reformers, they hadn't even been aware that this clause existed. And it was about, you know, if you don't have X percentage of the workers voting and voting by Y amount, then you can kind of force a contract through. And that's what Hoppa did. He forced this contract in, and that is what leads to the next several years, where his successor loses to Sean O'Brien, who had broken from Hoffa's regime during these negotiations. And Sean O'Brien had said, you know, I'm sick of these concessionary contracts. He ends up allying with a number of reformers within the union, and he runs to take over the presidency of the Teamsters on the, on several messages.

but one being that he is going to negotiate the strongest UPS contract ever and get rid of this tier. And he has done that. That is in the TA. But that really becomes the defining kind of story for the Teamsters reform as well. And Dan didn't mention it, but his slate when they ran for the UAW and won all of their seats, I believe, all seven leadership seats. Their slogan was no corruption, no concession, no tiers. So, I mean, it is a big issue.

And I just want to say, if I can, what Alex was talking about, about previous union leaders jamming agreements down the throats of their members, that's not just unique to the team six. That has been a longstanding issue in a lot of traditional legacy unions, is that the top leadership feels like they have the authority to force agreements on the rank and file members. And a huge part of our platform is that we will not do that under any certain. because the institutions exist to serve the members not, you know, perpetuate itself. You know, Joe, I worked in a unionized labor force once.

I didn't know that. Yeah. The Financial Times had a very active journalism union. And this discussion reminds me that one time, the union accidentally, I think it was accidentally published everyone's salaries in the newsroom. It was, it was an anonymous. Yeah, it was anonymized. But it was, they divided it by gender and age. And I think they were trying to make a point about how women were sort of systematically underpaid.

But you can imagine all hell broke loose. Everyone was upset with literally everyone else. Figuring out which columnist that had been here 35 years. I found out I was one of the two lowest paid women at the FT at that time. So that was fun. But this story does have a point, which is, you know, when you're leading these types of discussions, it seems like you are representing lots of different types of workers. And some of those workers might have a good deal and others might not.

And Alex mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that it feels like in 2023, a lot of workers are coalescing. They're coming together. They're sort of uniting, obviously, being in a union. How are you getting that kind of consensus when it feels like, you know, some people still have it a lot better than others? So there are certainly some union members, regardless of which sector you work in, that have, you know, quote unquote, better agreements than other ones or better situations. But it doesn't, at this point, it really doesn't matter what sector you work and where you work.

Even if you have it better than a fellow union member, say you represent a Boeing facility, they're wage-wise. They make very good wages. They make better wages than general voters. But as far as like the day-to-day and securing of work and what does the future look like, they're no security here. So there are issues that are universal regardless. And at this point, particularly since coming out of the pandemic, whether you're making more than a General Motors or a Ford worker at this point is irrelevant because we're seeing these companies that we've worked for across every sector making record profits. And yet our standard of living is going down, not going

up. I have people right now coming into my facilities that are working 40 hours a week in big three auto manufacturers and have to get EBT cards to feed their families. But yet Ford and General Motors and Stalantis want to tell me we're a family with one team. And it's just bullshit. It is not an equitable situation. Our contracts no longer meet the needs of working families and cannot allow us to remain in the working middle class. And in the past, we've negotiated from a place of trying to preserve jobs. Where we're at now is we are trying to preserve the American middle class, and we're not asking what we're putting forward our demands.

Alex, do you want to take that as well, just because I'm thinking, you brought up that point earlier that it seems like people are able to coalesce around issues a bit more. Like, how are they actually achieving that unity within their own ranks? Yeah, I mean, I'll give an example that might feel out of left field, but just to illustrate how sort of cross-sector, across industry this moment is. So I was just in Los Angeles reporting on the SAG AFRA and WGA strikes. And, you know, I was speaking to a lot of people on the picket lines

and, you know, much more visibly than any other unionized workforce, actors and writers have, you know, some of the most successful members that are outliers, right? And then they have the majority of the membership who are not household names, not people we would know. You know, Tom Cruz is a member of SAG after it, right? And so talk about like some members are doing very well while others aren't. And, you know, the Writers Guild gets around this problem by, for one, they try to involve the sort of leading members, the folks who are doing very well in the negotiation process, you know. And so, so I thought of this example while Dan was talking because one of the people I spoke to at length is Mike Scher, who wrote the good place. He created, you know, the

Parks and Rec, he was a key writer on the office. This is about as successful of a television showrunner as there is in this country, right? You know, it's rare that a writer is a household name, but a lot of people know who Mike sure is. And, you know, when I was speaking to him on the picket line, I was asking him, you know, why he had decided to kind of get involved in the fight. Like, he's on the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America. he is very actively, you know, presence in this strike, even though he's a very successful guy. And, you know, he said that it had been made clear to him that, you know, the studios, much like Dan said of Big Three, you know, these are massive corporations that have quite a bit of

money, if not sort of the level of profit that their investors want, that they aren't sharing it with the younger members, the people who are far less successful than Mike. And he told me, I wouldn't have the career at all that I had. have now if the system that exists now were the system that existed when I started. And he went through the exact kind of process, which, you know, might seem absurd compared to talking about auto workers, but, you know, writers are a production line like anyone else. And he talked about how when he started on the office, the creator Greg Daniels had walked him through how to do the job, how to write long-form television, how to get to know the different types of work done on set,

how to understand rewriting scripts versus throwing them out, all of these very technical job details like any other job. And they did that because they had the sort of budget and the time and the income for that sort of kind of mentorship and cross-generational kind of learning and teaching of the work. And he says, you know, now that can't happen with these younger writers. They aren't brought on set. They are contingent. Their contracts are shorter. Issues that when you get down to the bare bones sound like I could be talking about. auto workers or UPS workers. And so it's really interesting that, you know, I hear the, you know, when you sort of abstract

away the detail, it is similar fights across every industry. And I actually remember saying to Mike Scher on the picket line, I was telling him about this strike in Erie, Pennsylvania that I'd been at, these Wobtech workers are on strike members of UE. And they were having issues with a tier. And they had these younger workers who were so broke that similarly to what Dan said, you know, they can qualify for EBT, even though they have, you know, union jobs at a heavy manufacturing plant that is extremely profitable. And Mike, you know, was laughing on the picket line. He's like,

wow, it really is the same everywhere, huh? And so it's really not hard to sort of see these relationships between these processes. And just like Dan was saying about, you know, sort of getting how to get buy in for a reduction of tears or otherwise kind of fighting back, you know, these processes at the sort of needy-gritty level are getting Mike sure on the negotiating committee so that you have him inside the house rather than out. You know, with these more industrial facilities, it's building up the understanding that, you know, you are fighting for future workers that actually abandoning your younger membership just because you happen to be in the higher paid tier is going to hit your pension at some point. It's going to destroy your union, so on and so forth. And also it's morally wrong.

So, but that is the nitty-gritty of organizing for sure. If I can just, if I can jump off of that for one thing. Please. What Alex mentioned about Greg Daniels bringing in younger writer and teach him up how to do the job and stuff. Another thing that we're seeing in the manufacturing sector and what the auto manufacturers in general don't like to talk about is that as union laborers, we are painted a lot. We always want more and more and more. We don't care about the companies.

we only care about more stuff for ourselves. That couldn't be further from the truth. Our more senior workers are concerned at this point because by the time we get these new people coming in the door trained up to be proficient at the jobs, they're leaving to go work at Dollar General because they can make more money. They're leaving to go work at Walmart because they can make more money in air conditioning, which not as physically demanding on your body. And so they paint us as these like, you know, leftist laborers that just want more money. But we do care about these manufacturing institutions. We do take pride in building vehicles in this country. We don't want to lose all the people we're training up to go work in retail jobs. But you set the wages. And if you say

you care about the companies, the management tells us all the time they were a family and they care about these institutions, then you need to listen to what your good faith partners are saying, which is we are not going to remain viable manufacturers if we don't have a workforce that can do the work because you pay them less than dollar general with us. So what a, that's, I mean, you sort of anticipated my next question. So I tried to read the 2019 UAWGM agreement. I think I found the files like 750 pages. I have to admit I didn't like read the whole thing in detail.

I tried to skim it. But sort of top line beyond the, the tiered workforce. Dan, what do you sort of talk to us just about like what are the big priorities? I mean, we're, you know, just a little over, I guess just a little over a month. month until the current contract expires. What are the sort of like big priorities that you and your union hope to achieve in these negotiations? Well, what we hope to achieve, the president's office has laid out pretty clear, and they just put out a list of membership demands, I believe, yesterday. We want to obviously end the tiered wages within our facilities and not just the tiered wages

that are in the contract, but we have multiple different facilities within the families of the these companies, we have General Motors components holding companies, which make $10, $15, $20, less an hour because they make parts instead of producing main engines or body parts. We have multiple tiered wages throughout the entirety of the big three, and it's all broken up. So we want the tiered wages to end. We also want the cost of living adjustments to be unsuspended because they didn't get rid of cost of living adjustments during the recession. They suspended them. We want to reinstate the cost. the living adjustments in our contracts because our wages are not matching inflation. And these

companies are not in a financially precarious situation. They are making and posting record profits. Ford just recently posted their net income for the second quarter as $1.9 billion. General Motors adjusted earnings for the second quarter was $3.2 billion. And Stalantis, which reports their profits every six months, reported in the first. half of the year, $12.1 billion in profits of 37% increase over the last year. So we feel like these companies are very capable of reinstating cost of living adjustments. We also want to see increases into our retirees pensions because they haven't seen increases in almost 12, 15 years. And again, we don't feel that anything that we're asking for is outrageous. We're not asking for

companies to turn us into the billionaires overnight. We're just asking them to pay equitable wages that help us to live stable lives. I mean, Stalant is just at the opening of negotiations just recently, the chief negotiator had the audacity to say that the younger generation likes the flexibility of having a sidehouse. I can't believe those words came out of his fucking mouth. The fact that we had people working 40, 50, 60 hours a week and yet, oh, no, they like the flexibility of having to drive Uber, too, just so they can pay their bills.

it was a slap in the face and just shows how disassociated they are with their general workflows. And if they think that we're all one happy family, I don't know what universe they live in it. Bloomberg Tech returns to San Francisco, June 3rd and 4th. Join me, Emily Chang, along with Tom Giles, as we convene the CEOs, investors, and innovators shaping what's next in technology. Powered by Bloomberg's Global Newsroom and unrivaled terminal data will break down the capital, connectivity, and big ideas. driving the industry forward. Be part of the conversation. Register now at Bloomberglive.com slash tech. That's Bloomberg Live.com slash tech. Dan, can I ask you about the EV concerns specifically? And this is something we alluded to in the intro. There does seem to be a controversy brewing over what

type of labor is needed or desired to produce electric vehicles versus traditional cars. Can you walk us through that issue, how you see it? Sure. So we're not naive. Transitioning to electric vehicles is going to be absolutely necessary. But, I mean, the climate is warming. Our members run a huge range of political, you know, positions. But whether we like it or not, the transitions happen. Oh, yeah.

I read that the UAW was instrumental in the first ever Earth Day, which I did not know. Yeah. And we firmly believe that there does need to be a transition to electric vehicles. What we're concerned about is that that transition is going to be a continuation of just this endless race to the bottom of wages. So it's going to require less jobs. We know that. What we want to see is that these battery parts and as we transition into electric vehicle manufacturing stuff, that these jobs fall under UAW master agreements, which gives us job security, which allows our more senior members if they so desire to transfer into these jobs. and that the wages, you know, mirror the wages that we make in the internal combustion engine manufacturing.

Where we have concerns is that there is massive investment going into these facilities, taxpayer dollars and investment on behalf of the, I mean, the energy department just loan $9.2 billion to Ford to build battery plants in the south and right to work states. And the Biden administration didn't require any sort of guarantees of those jobs, being UAW jobs or being any union jobs at all. They basically just said, hey, Ford, please be nice to these workers and let them have a vote if you feel like it. And so we don't find that acceptable. So we're willing and ready to work with these companies to assist in the transition to an electric future.

As long as there is equity in those jobs. And they allow us wages that can maintain middle class lifestyles. I don't feel like anything about that is a huge ass. Alex, do you perceive that organized labor is sort of trying to think how to phrase this question, but get squeezed within sort of progressive priorities. It's like, oh, you know, it's like we want to have like a robust economy. Things are good for workers because unemployment rate is below 4%. And climate change is really important.

So we really need to make sure that we accelerate these sort of electrification of vehicles, et cetera, and that pressure, whether it's at the UAW or elsewhere, gets put on organized labor to sort of, I guess, play ball in a nice way with other liberal or progressive priorities? Yeah, I mean, I think there is a long history of that, particularly around environmental concerns, you know, and it's really unfortunate because, you know, as Tracy mentioned, the sort of funny fact that the UAW was involved in the first Earth Day. I mean, a lot of workers care about the environment, right? And it is very unfortunate that they are sort of pitted against one another in this way. I mean, in the case of what's going on right now with the UAW and the EV plants and the Biden administrations, various the Biden economics that either have strings attached or don't in the case of certain of these EV plants. You know, I think there's a lot of pressure on the UAW to not be seen as someone who is holding up, you know,

transition of policies, you know, that the environmental movement has been sort of advocating for a long time. There's the sense that, oh, they are just one constituency, but they're a small one compared to, you know, the entire country, which needs, you know, this transition to EVs. But that's really not how to think of it, right? I mean, these workers, you know, I've always said that if you want a just transition and a Green New Deal, they're going to be the key people, that you actually need to shift over there because they're the ones who are going to be building the machinery. I mean, often they end up being the ones that are on the front lines with whistleblowing about polluting vehicles or otherwise sort of, you know, environmental concerns. I mentioned the Erie plant that I was at recently.

Those workers want to build green locomotives. They know the technology is there. The people along the assembly line are sick of breathing in the pollution from polluting locomotive. they're the ones that kind of have the leverage and the knowledge to talk about how to transition. But when labor is sort of treated in this way as like, oh, they're not, they're sort of junior partners to the environmental movement or sort of people who don't really understand the bigger kind of scientific necessities of this transition, I think you're going to find exactly what you're finding here, which is that these are working class people who are not going to

put up with the sort of reduction in their, for their wages, which these companies are very much using the EV transition to achieve. and it's never going to be a realistic transition. I mean, because when we talk about power for the left, it is institutions like the one Dan is in the leadership of who actually have the kind of organizational capacity to push for their demands and get things done. And I think a lot of people in the climate movement

might be surprised to see what that looks like come September. To me, I think it's really tragic that it kind of gets set up in this way, that people might look at the UAWs. you know, for example, it's hesitation to endorse Biden and say that they're being, you know, sort of unrealistic or difficult, or does that mean they're endorsing someone on the right? They're just looking out for working class people. And I think they're, they, if anyone is going to push for a stronger kind of attachment to any of Biden, Biden's sort of, you know, whether it's

the IRA or any other programs that are loaning, you know, almost unlimited capital in the form of tax credits to these people building these. plants, we want someone like the UAW to put that pressure on. How else will we get stronger packages? So that's my view on these things. I couldn't agree more about what Alex just said, you know, my membership, the vast majority of us are not partisan ideal rights. What we absolutely are tired of, though, is of politicians paying us simply lip service. I am tired to death of hearing how the Biden administration is the most pro-labor, most best friend, is my best friend. I'm tired of hearing because when you give out billions of dollars of taxpayer investments

with no guarantees of those jobs falling under our master agreements, which would make those our jobs, that doesn't feel like you're my friend, Biden. It doesn't make me feel like you're my buddy, Joe. Okay. And so we have not endorsed the president yet. And I think that's the, I think it's the best move that our international president, Sean, can make. I am willing to talk to anyone running. I want to talk to Cornell West. I want to talk to Chris Christie. I'll talk to anyone who has my bag.

Because right now, our union, our institution is feeling like the traditional Democratic Party doesn't necessarily have our back. And we're not dumb. Like I get a feeling sometimes that these politicians think like we are uneducated and we're just, we're not the most intelligent people. We understand it's election year. We understand it's going to come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia. We understand that. And if you think we're just going to co-sign and just rubber-stamp checks and rubber stamp endorsements, you are highly mistaken.

We need guarantees that the transition into the electrical people future is going to secure our members right to the American middle class. And if you're not willing to assist us in that, I guarantee you there are other people that will. I just have one more question, which is, you know, if the Biden administration says they want EVs to be a thing that are produced in the United States. States. And if car makers want to be competitive on this new technology, if they say, you know what, we're competing against other manufacturers in Mexico or in China. And so we need to cut costs. We need to be competitive. Like, how do they achieve that while working with the union? What's the optimal outcome here from your perspective? And do you see evidence that some of the, car companies are sort of, I guess, playing the worker off against each other and different jurisdictions?

Yes. Yes, I do. I have Ford manufacturers from the subcontinent of India reaching out to me through social media. They're under attack by Ford in those countries. These companies are constantly telling us, oh, well, we have to remain viable options for manufacturing. We have to remain flexible in the marketplace.

As I said earlier, the massive record-breaking profits that you are recording primarily made in the North American plants, mind you. We're not saying that you have to hurt your investors. We're not saying that you can't still return a profit. We're saying that you have to share the wealth. I would like to point out that Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, for last year in 22, made $20,996,146. Okay, but where the problem? Mary Behrer, the CEO of General Motors, made $29 million in 2021, but yet our wages and health care is what's holding the companies back.

And Mr. Carlos Tavares, the free man himself, made a freaking $24.8 million in 2022. Yet we, the workforce, need to remain flexible and viable. We're just not going to, we're not going to continue to listen to this narrative that, oh, well, we have to compete in these unfair marketplaces and stuff, then lobby our politicians to have stronger roles that don't allow these foreign companies to undercut you. It's not going to be on the backs of our employees. I just want to underline that. I mean, those numbers that Dan was thrown out about the CEO pay, you know, just to be clear here as far as viability and how these, the big three and their partners in these joint ventures are paying Dan's members, you know,

there's one joint, there's one battery plant that opened in Warren, Ohio, between GM and a Korean battery maker LG. You know, they voted to join the UAW almost unanimously in December of last year.

So as far as I know, the union hasn't negotiated a first contract, but the workers there had starting pay of $16.50. And they top out to $20 an hour after seven years. I mean, again, with the inflation,

we have seven years, and then you'll get 20 an hour. So I just want to explain here, underlying with that example, just how bad these jobs are, right? I mean, it is not realistic to expect an institution like the UAW looking out for its members, people like Dan, to say that this is okay as kind of a means of undercutting the very hard-won standards that the UAW got in auto, which set the standard, set the pace for the, you know, manufacturing jobs across the United States when, you know, in the last, century, they see this as, you know, the transition is a great way for these companies to undo those standards. And I think it's hard to argue with that. Dan, real quick, what's whipsawing?

And I know this has existed before some of the EV tension, but talk about that and talk about this, you know, as it relates to sort of playing workers off of each other. Sure. So whipsawing is a term that we use of manufacturing in which companies and comrades they force local unions or manufacturing plants to basically undercut and bargain against other manufacturing plants throughout the United States for investments. So if General Motors is putting in a new generation engine, they'll go to the different engine plants and say to one, hey, the plant down in, I don't know, South Carolina is willing to give us this in wages.

What are you willing to give us? If you're not willing to give us a better deal, then that investment in work is going to go down South Carolina and not into New York State. So they pit us against one another to battle for investments. They do that from state to state, but they also do that across international boundaries. They try to get us to battle our Canadian counterparts in uniform and the auto manufacturing plants in Canada and against the Canadian or excuse me, the Mexican auto workers unions. They try to make us battle each other for a race to the bottom onto the lowest wages and worst benefits. It's gone on forever.

Dan and Alex, thank you so much. I really appreciate both your perspectives. I learned a lot. Very helpful context in this sort of final month or so of negotiations, perhaps. So appreciate both of you taking the time and coming on odd lot. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us all. Yeah, that was great. Thank you both so much. Yeah, that was really interesting. Yeah, thank you. Tracy, I really enjoyed that conversation. I mean, there's a lot there, obviously, and I just feel like, and it's not a perfect storm, but there are many things happening at once that make this a really interesting sort of lens and thing to pay attention to, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. I kind of, I just want to do

an episode on union politics. I find them so interesting. And I really, I would love to be a fly on the wall of presumably the room when the union comes up with like a list of, not demands, but asks, and like why they want certain things versus other things. And is there a whole bunch of like game theory involved, do you shoot high and expect to negotiate down a little bit, or do you, you know, hold the line against the big three? There's so many different angles to pick out. Also, lots of new terminology like whipsawing. Yeah, I feel like that was a totally new one for me. I did not realize the degree to which plants were sort of played off of each other in that way is really interesting. I also thought some of Dan's point, or really interesting about labor retention. And especially like

the last three years, particularly, which a bunch of companies suddenly woke up to the fact that an endless stream of workers is not a guaranteed, like, birthright of any company, right? Like, suddenly companies realize they had to fight for labor and that, you know, without this sort of like strong continuity that there is this danger of like, okay, well, why not just go work in a Walmart or a dollar general and maybe get paid close to the same amount, except it's not backbreaking work and at least the facilities are more air conditions. Right. I am surprised that wages for new workers in car manufacturing haven't gone up more. And, I mean, you've sort of seen the opposite in a lot of other industries where the new workers have been able to negotiate much more attractive salaries and contracts than some of the older workers who have been there for 10 or 20 years.

But in cars, it seems to be the complete opposite. Yeah. No, I mean, I remember that the UAW was basically forced to take these concessions in 2009 because they're like, look, these companies. are not going to exist in months if you don't, like, restructure the contract. But to hear about how, like, still, you know, 15 years or 14 years later, they're still dealing, trying to get some of these things undone from that period, I thought it was really interesting. Yeah. Well, all right, negotiations are coming up now-ish.

Yes. It'll be really interesting to see what happens. Yeah, I feel this was very helpful, and now maybe I'll actually understand what I read when over the course of the coming month or so. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.

I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me on Twitter at the stalwart. Follow our guests on Twitter, Alex Press. She's at Alex N Press. Dan, I don't think is on Twitter, but UAW Region 9 is on Twitter at UAW Region 9.

follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armin and Dashel Bennett at Dashbot and check out all of the Bloomberg podcasts under the handle at podcasts. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odd Lots, where we have a blog, transcript, and a newsletter, and check out the Discord. Discord.org.g. There's a transportation room in there where I'm sure people will be discussing this episode, lots of car talking about. And if you enjoy listening to Odd Lots, please leave you. us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening.

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