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auto bailout, automotive, Biden administration, Detroit automakers, election 2024, electric vehicles, Employment, EVs, Ford, Frank Morano, General Motors, green transition, inflation, Jobs, labor, Making News, Stellantis, strikes, UAW, unions, United Auto Workers, WABC AM, wages
I’m pleased to announce that I returned last night to Frank Morano’s popular late-night New York City WABC-AM radio show to discuss the economic, environmental, and political impact of the current strike against the Big Three Detroit automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis), and whether or not anyone should pay attention to the opening of the UN General Assembly.
The appearance came together too late last night to post about yesterday, but here’s a link to the podcast. My segment starts at the 24-minute mark, but you’ll find that Frank’s programs are always worth listening to for as long as you can.
Further, here’s a special bonus – some background information on the fortunes of American auto workers in recent decades that I uncovered in the course of preparing for the interview.
According to official U.S. data, employment in the U.S. motor vehicle sector has been booming. We only have sector-specific numbers going back to January, 1990, but since then, domestic manufacturing’s production and non-supervisory payrolls overall are down by 28.34 percent, while the vehicles blue collar workforce has soared by 38.67 percent.
Keep in mind, however, that these numbers don’t represent the Big Three’s blue collar workforce. To give you an idea of how it’s changed, note that from 1979 to last year, membership in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union that’s begun the strike has plummeted from a peak of about 1.5 million to fewer than 400,000. Moreover, like many industrial unions, UAW membership includes many different sectors. And of those 400,000 workers, only 35 percent work for the Big Three.
So what explains the difference between surging blue collar vehicle headcounts and their cratering Big Three counterparts? Basically, the mushrooming presence in America of foreign-owned auto factories, which have overwhelmingly located in the non-union (“right to work”), lower-wage and cost states of the South.
This development, plus major compensation concessions (including benefits) that the union agreed to in the early 2000s (between 2007 and 2009, mainly in exchange for the jobs-preserving federal auto industry bailout during the financial crisis) have turned the domestic vehicle-making industry into a major wage laggard. For example, since 2009, total U.S. manufacturing blue collar hourly wages have dipped by 1.38 percent after inflation. But vehicle workers’ real hourly wages have sunk by 9.33 percent.
And speaking of inflation, the price rises during the Biden administration certainly haven’t helped. Since February, 2021 alone, inflation-adjusted manufacturing wages overall are off by 3.79 percent, and their vehicle-making counterparts have fallen by three percent.
As these figures make clear, auto workers have taken it on the chin pay-wise for many years. Yet as I mentioned in the interview, the auto makers face major expenses in making the technological changes needed to make the electric vehicles at the heart of their green transition profitable – and profitable quickly.
Add in the conflict Frank and I discussed last night between the Biden administration’s stated determination to strengthen the union movement, and its apparently equally strong commitment to fighting climate change, then combine it with these tensions playing out in an election year, and the auto strike really does look like a crucial turning point for the U.S. economy and American politics.