John F. Floyd: Pivot to electric vehicles will cost union jobs

If I was a member of the United Automobile Workers union, I would be madder than hell.

Because the UAW hierarchy has blindly followed President Joe Biden’s political/industrial policy, the bloodletting has begun. The bloodletting I am talking about is the loss of UAW jobs brought about by Biden’s mandates concerning the electrification of the American automobile.

Stellantis, a company formed by the merger of the country France’s PSA Group and Italian American Fiat Chrysler just announced the closure of a Jeep assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois. The plant employed 1,350 people and was built in the 1960s.

Surely someone, somewhere, informed the leadership of the UAW union of the fact that electric vehicles are much less complicated to build than gas-powered vehicles.

Ray Curry, president of the UAW, made the feeble comment, “Not allocating new product to plants like Belvidere is unacceptable.” Well, President Curry better get ready to accept the “unacceptable” because he has been outfoxed by the Biden administration as well as the automotive companies, General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis.

It is a well-known fact that the electric vehicle requires 30% fewer parts than the cars and trucks of today. This equates to 30% fewer workers to produce the same number of cars and trucks. And to exacerbate the problem, the auto companies are under extreme financial pressure from investors and regulatory agencies to provide more capital for the development of electric vehicles. Chrysler and parent Stellantis must spend $35 billion on development of electric vehicles

In the meantime, the automotive companies are building battery plants along with Asian partners. GM-LG has just announced that a battery plant being built jointly will be unionized.

In an article written by Nora Eckert and Mike Colias in the Wall Street Journal, they wrote, “The auto industry’s race to produce more electric vehicles eventually could lead to a loss of jobs within its existing workforce, because EVs require fewer parts and less labor to assemble than cars with internal combustion engines. That threat magnifies the importance of the UAW’s efforts to secure a foothold at the future battery plants, said Marick Masters, a professor of business and labor at Wayne State University.”

Even if the UAW organizes these battery plants, the wage rates will not equate with the jobs they replace at GM, Ford and Chrysler. The rates at these partly owned Asian facilities pay $15 to $22 per hour where the average hourly earnings for a present-day UAW assembly plant worker is over $30 per hour. And even benefits are much higher for UAW represented employees.

The investment dollars for battery plants are staggering. Ford Motor Co., in conjunction with Korea’s Innovation Co., is spending more than $11 billion to build two factories in Kentucky and a third one in Tennessee. It is estimated, based on known domestic manufacturing plans, that these battery plants will employ over 12,000 people. But that figure is a drop in the bucket compared to the UAW job loss.

The UAW presently has 400,000 workers with 580,000 retirees. There are 600 local unions, 1,750 contracts with 1,650 employers. The UAW has assets of $1.1 billion. If the UAW loses 30% of its present workforce as has been predicted, the outcome of the transition to electric vehicles will be a devastating blow to the UAW. It won’t be just the workers at Jeep’s Illinois plant who are the recipient of the government-forced re-allocation of capital. Thirty percent of 300,000 is 132,000. That is the number for automotive employees looking for a job because of political machinations.

I still believe a planned transition from gas to hybrid, hybrid to all-electric was the proper way to attack the emissions problem.

John F. Floyd is a Gadsden native who graduated from Gadsden High School in 1954. He formerly was director of United Kingdom manufacturing, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., vice president of manufacturing and international operations, General Tire & Rubber Co., and director of manufacturing, Chrysler Corp. He can be reached at johnfloyd538@gmail.com. The opinions reflected are his own.   

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: JOHN F. FLOYD: Pivot to electric vehicles will cost union jobs