An Ohio Town Struggles Between Biden’s Clean Energy Agenda and Union Support

Contract talks at an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown could have even more of an impact than the autoworkers’ strike on the labor standards of the emerging electric-vehicle industry

By Jonathan Weisman of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"Will the transition to a clean energy economy yield a bright future for American workers, or will it consign a large cohort of them to low-wage, minimal-benefit jobs that leave voters in some of the most critical swing states pining for an ecologically unsound but better-paid past?"

"batteries will replace much of the mechanics that consume the labor of conventional auto work"

“Up the road from the once-iconic Lordstown Assembly Complex, where 15,000 union workers once assembled millions of cars, now stands a battery plant that employs a fraction of the workers at a fraction of the wages,”" said [Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio]

"Once at full capacity, Ultium could reap tax benefits totaling $1.2 billion a year through legislation signed by the president to speed up the transition to electric vehicles. That is leverage that workers say Mr. Biden is not using.

“If this is truly something they support, they could probably back in a little more,” Eric Manaro, 34, a crew leader in the Ultium packaging department. “I mean, they’ve never been down to the area. You know, proof to the pudding.”"

"some of the most pro-union provisions in Mr. Biden’s economic agenda were stripped out of the final Inflation Reduction Act."

"In 2009, after he bailed out Detroit, President Obama drove a Chevy Cruze on the factory floor as a victory lap. Mr. Manaro and Mr. Goranitis were there as assembly line workers. In 2018, G.M. shut down the factory anyway"

"But, said A.J. Sumell, an economist at the Center for Working Class Studies of Youngstown State University, the electric vehicle transition is happening"