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Electric Vehicles

President Biden on the picket line.
Sparks

It’s Been a Very Weird 24 Hours for Biden in Michigan

Boy, are the politics of electric vehicles complicated.

Politics

It’s a Bike! It’s a Truck! No, It’s … New York’s Next Climate Fight!

This weird oversized e-bike is sparking a controversy in New York City.

Yellow
A car missing from an auto show display.

The Detroit Auto Show Is an Ominous Snoozefest

On the fall of a storied automative event.

Green
Striking autoworkers.

The UAW Strike-EV Connection, Explained

A deep dive into the union’s demands

Blue
Politics

Why Republicans Are Salivating Over the UAW Strike

Is a backlash to electric cars brewing in a key Democratic voting block?

An elephant and voters.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

Do Republicans have a chance to steal some voters from the Democrats?

Conservative intellectuals and elected officials are looking at the United Auto Workers strike against the “Big Three” American automakers as an opportunity to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and its contested working class support. While the UAW is striking over typical labor issues like pay, hours, pensions and health care, lurking in the background are the electric vehicle transition and the Inflation Reduction Act, two pillars of President Biden’s time in the White House.

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Electric Vehicles

The EV Labor Fight Is Going Global

Electric car jobs are a problem around the world.

A Volkswagen EV and auto workers.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

At the stroke of midnight, employees at three plants owned by General Motors, Ford, and Jeep walked off the job. None of those plants make electric vehicles, unless you count the plug-in hybrid Jeep Wrangler. But make no mistake — the strike by the United Auto Workers union, its most aggressive labor actions since the 1930s, plays directly into a larger fight over the battery-driven future of the car industry. And that fight has already gone global; you may have just not noticed it yet.

There are a lot of complicated, interwoven issues driving the UAW’s strike, which will start with those three plants but may include more if negotiations deteriorate. First and foremost is pay and benefits at America’s existing UAW plants. Like everyone who’s not fortunate enough to be in the top tax bracket, the UAW’s workers have been stung by inflation and higher costs of living. What was once a well-defined path to middle-class life has been hammered in the last decade as carmaking jobs got sent to Mexico and China. This, after those auto workers made tremendous concessions to keep their employers afloat during the Great Recession and subsequent auto industry bailouts, only to see some of their top leaders go to prison for taking bribes while also failing to increase their ranks at companies like Nissan and Tesla. They’re pissed, and they have every right to be pissed.

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