Auto Strike Threat Exposes IRA’s Biggest Flaw
The union isn’t wrong to demand more for its members. The Big Three aren’t wrong to want flexibility as they are pressured into an EV transition. Finding middle ground will be hard.
Demonstrators during a United Auto Workers practice picket outside a Stellantis plant in Detroit, Michigan.
Photographer: Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The fault-line running through President Joe Biden’s climate policy is now generating tremors in Detroit. Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, has declared “war” on the Big Three automakers, with the union’s current four-year contract due to expire on September 14 and the threat of strikes palpable. The Inflation Reduction Act is both combatant and casualty.
Not that Fain and the UAW are aiming at the IRA. The lets-get-ready-to-rumble rhetoric and demands, including a 46% increase in pay, owe much to a confluence of pricing, payrolls and payback.