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The ID.4 Could Be Volkswagen’s First EV Made With U.S. Union Labor

The UAW makes its first move.

A Volkswagen sign.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In Shawn Fain’s victory speech after the United Autoworkers won significant raises and benefits from the Big Three automakers earlier this fall, the union president promised to go on to accomplish what no other UAW president had managed to do. “We’re going to organize non-union auto companies like we’ve never organized before,” he said.

On Thursday, the union made its first move: Workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee went public with a union drive, announcing that more than 30% of the plant had signed union authorization cards.

After the UAW won 25% raises in its deals with GM, Ford, and Stellantis, Volkswagen gave its workers an 11% raise. In a press release, workers at the Chattanooga plant said they were striking due to pay that lagged behind their unionized peers, mistreatment by management, forced overtime, and a lack of time off. “Turnover at the plant is a serious problem,” said Josh Epperson, an equipment operator in assembly. “I have trained new people on the line and most of them are gone in a few months. They don’t have the tools and the support they need to thrive.”

The Chattanooga plant opened 15 years ago and is VW’s only factory in the U.S.; by contrast, all of the company’s workers in Germany are unionized. The U.S. plant currently produces the VW Atlas, Atlas Sport, and the company’s only electric model currently available here, the ID.4.

Workers at the U.S. plant have already attempted to unionize twice, in 2014 and 2019, both of which were narrow losses. An account of what went wrong in 2019 by Chris Brooks, a labor activist and current strategist for Shawn Fain, said that lawmakers threatened to pull incentives for the plant’s expansion and new electric vehicle line if the plant flipped.

Similar expansions are on the table again this time around. In early November, senior vice president and head of strategy at VW Group of America Reinhard Fischer announced plans to bring a new, under-$35,000 EV to the U.S. market. He said the company would either build the vehicle at the Chattanooga Plant or in Puebla, Mexico. He also said that the company was considering assembling battery packs for the vehicle in the U.S. due to subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

While 30% support is low, it clears the threshold to submit a petition to the National Labor Relations Board to hold a vote on the union’s formation. Still, the Chattanooga workers are likely to hold off for more. The UAW has said that once 50% of workers at a nonunion plant sign cards, Fain will hold a rally at the plant. If the drive gets 70% support, UAW will seek recognition from the company, or otherwise submit a petition to the NLRB.

There are 13 non-union automakers operating in the U.S. Tesla, which has six factories here, could be next — Fain told Reuters that many workers at the EV giant have also expressed interest in organizing.

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Sparks

Exclusive: New York’s $32 Million Induction Stove Contest Has a Winner

Berkeley-based Copper was selected to supply 10,000 stoves to the New York City Housing Authority.

A Copper stove.
Heatmap Illustration/Copper

Last year, New York City went shopping for 10,000 induction stoves so it could ditch gas in its public housing. Now it's ready to make a purchase.

The New York Power Authority and NYC Housing Authority have selected Copper, a Berkeley, California-based startup that was formerly known as Channing Street Copper Company, as the winner of their Induction Stove Challenge, Heatmap has learned. The agencies are planning to award the company a $32 million, seven-year contract to design, prototype, test, and install its stoves in apartments throughout the city.

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The Supreme Court.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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The high court’s decision will allow the EPA to defend the rule in a lower court over the next 10 months. A group of power utilities, trade groups, and Republican-governed states are suing to block the greenhouse gas rule, arguing that it oversteps the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act.

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What Happens to a Landfill in a Hurricane?

The trash mostly stays put, but the methane is another story.

A hurricane and a landfill.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In the coming days and weeks, as Floridians and others in storm-ravaged communities clean up from Hurricane Milton, trucks will carry all manner of storm-related detritus — chunks of buildings, fences, furniture, even cars — to the same place all their other waste goes: the local landfill. But what about the landfill itself? Does this gigantic trash pile take to the air and scatter Dorito bags and car parts alike around the surrounding region?

No, thankfully. As Richard Meyers, the director of land management services at the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County, assured me, all landfill waste is covered with soil on “at least a weekly basis,” and certainly right before a hurricane, preventing the waste from being kicked up. “Aerodynamically, [the storm is] rolling over that covered waste. It’s not able to blow six inches of cover soil from the top of the waste.”

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