Last fall, Tiffany Simmons, a second-generation auto worker, endured a six-week strike at the Ford Motor plant just west of Detroit, where the Bronco SUV is made. The move eased hardship for workers with an expected 25 percent pay increase over the next four years. It’s a cut she and her fellow union members accepted more than a decade ago.
But Simmons, 38, is pondering the future of America’s auto industry in the state that invented it and worries about the transition to a new force: electric vehicles. She is disappointed that President Biden supports the transition. President Biden has made her pro-worker credentials central to her re-election bid and recently secured the endorsement of her union, the United Auto Workers.
The Biden administration is embracing electric vehicles as a way to create good-paying jobs while reducing emissions. It offered tax credits to encourage consumers to buy electric cars, but the benefits are limited to models with U.S.-made parts.
But autoworkers are clinging to the assumption that producing electric cars, simpler machines than their gasoline-powered predecessors, will require less labor. They accuse Biden of putting their lives at risk.
“I’m disappointed,” Simmons said of the president. “We trust you to make sure you keep Americans employed.”
Michigan is one of six battleground states that could decide the winner of the presidential election. The auto industry has long been central to the state’s economic outlook and powered the middle class through much of the 20th century, but it has eliminated jobs and depressed living standards in recent decades.
Today, the fate of Michigan’s auto industry revolves around key variables. Is the transition to electric vehicles a source of new energy and paychecks, or the latest reason to worry about the fate of America’s factory workers?
“It’s still early days,” said Gabriel Ehrlich, an economic forecaster at the University of Michigan. “The idea that less labor will be needed to produce electric vehicles is widespread, but not universal. In the long term, we expect labor demand in auto manufacturing to decline.”
Resentment over the possibility of losing jobs among auto workers, a key voting bloc, is reportedly prompting the Biden administration to consider relaxing tough auto emissions standards and slowing the transition to electric vehicles. ing. Tightening emissions regulations were a central pillar of the administration’s efforts to force automakers to produce electric vehicle models.
In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is ramping up training programs to help workers get jobs in manufacturing, particularly in the emerging field of electric vehicles.
“This is where the world is going,” said Jonathan Smith, senior deputy director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. He is overseeing the creation of a state office to help workers build careers in the electric vehicle industry. “The question is, are we ready for Michigan?”
Mr. Biden’s supposed opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, has accused the White House of pursuing a “job-killing EV mandate” and deepened ties with autoworkers. Many of them dismiss electric cars as unnecessary, unaffordable, and impractical given their need for charging. They complain that their jobs are at risk due to the goal of limiting carbon emissions, but many question the scientific consensus behind climate change. There is.
Nelson Westrick, 48, who works at a Ford factory in Sterling Heights, an industrial suburb north of Detroit, said, “The electricity is so powerful right now that it’s scary.” “This appliance will literally kill thousands of jobs.”
The father of four is affiliated with a group called Auto Workers for Trump. His factory produces mechanical parts that connect the transmissions and wheels of gasoline cars. If electric cars became popular, he said, “all my factories would cease to exist.”
Although Simmons feels betrayed by Biden, she despises Trump as an “entertainer” and said she would not vote for him. But she also believes electric cars are at odds with the interests of blue-collar workers.
When Henry Ford pioneered the modern assembly line, he was eager to produce cars in large quantities to keep prices down and give his employees a ride home. Today’s auto worker derides EVs as a luxury for people with his three-car garage.
“Some weeks I get to see my daughter two out of seven days, and I go there to build something that will help someone get their daughter or son to soccer practice,” Simmons said. “The worst thing you can do is make something you can’t afford.”
semen industry in michigan
Detroit has been an industrial center since the late 19th century due to its proximity to the Great Lakes and natural transportation system that allows raw materials to be transported from anywhere. Local factories manufactured railroad cars, ovens, and stoves. Much like Silicon Valley decades later, the city was full of tinkerers and entrepreneurs flexing their creative muscles in search of wealth.
Henry Ford turned his Model T into the world’s first mass-produced car, mastering the intricacies of the assembly line at the giant Highland Park factory.
Michigan went from being an agricultural state to one where virtually anyone willing to pick up a wrench could earn enough money in a factory to buy a home and take their family on vacation. That was often behind the wheel of a Ford. By 1950, Michigan was the 10th richest state in terms of personal income per capita, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
But over the next few decades, Michigan transformed into a symbol of forces attacking the security of America’s middle class. International trade and container shipping allowed companies to move factory production to Asia and Latin America. Union power declined, especially as U.S. manufacturers moved jobs to non-union factories in the South. Increased automation has allowed factories to produce more products with fewer workers.
By 2009, the financial crisis and weak sales had pushed major automakers to the brink of bankruptcy. Manufacturing employment in Michigan has fallen by about half from a decade ago.
By 2021, Michigan had fallen to 37th among states in per capita personal income. Detroit became synonymous with deindustrialization, its urban core pockmarked with abandonment.
Ford’s Highland Park plant is now vacant, with broken windows overlooking cracked pavement. A nearby shopping mall, Model T Plaza, has an outlet store that sells payday loans and plasma.
But a job center across the street from the sleepy factory refers people looking for work to community colleges that provide training for jobs at electric vehicle and battery factories.
“There’s a lot of opportunity out there,” said Malik Broadnax, 27, who was starting a four-month technical program at Macomb Community College on how to program robots. Almost all tuition fees were covered by government subsidies.
Broadnax worked low-paying jobs cleaning hotel rooms and changing tires. Once I finish the program, I expect to start working in a factory for at least $25 an hour.
In downtown Detroit, Ford is investing nearly $1 billion in redeveloping the area known as Michigan Central, including restoring a grand but abandoned old train station. A former post office has been converted into a startup incubator where around 80 companies, most of them in the electric vehicle industry, share manufacturing space.
Marcus Glenn was preparing to graduate from a course held in the building that trains people to install and maintain EV charging stations. The Biden administration has spent $7.5 billion on public broadcasters.
Glenn, 35, sees the training program as a gateway to his future and expressed confidence that he can quickly find a job paying at least $35 an hour.
“It puts me in the door into this field,” he said. “The sky is the limit.”
uncertain future
But how quickly will the promised electric future materialize? And how long will the gasoline car industry stick around?
Ehrlich, an economist at the University of Michigan, said job growth in Michigan is likely to increase in the coming years as automakers continue to produce gasoline-powered cars while adding factories to make electric vehicles and batteries. Ta.
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One possible outcome is that if electric vehicles gradually advance to account for 100 percent of new car sales by 2050, total auto manufacturing employment in Michigan will increase slightly to 180,000, After that, Dr. Ehrlich predicts, the number will drop to 150,000.
But if the transition accelerates further and Michigan loses investment in states with weak union influence, job losses could be even greater, with perhaps 90,000 jobs remaining by 2050. be. That could result in the loss of an additional 330,000 jobs in support services such as insurance and trucking.
Dr. Ehrlich hastened to add that the trend line looks good so far.
Union leaders have expressed similar positions, vowing to organize workers in more factories. They point out that new contracts with the Big Three automakers prohibit workers from transferring production of emerging technologies to non-union subsidiaries.
Under the new contract, the maximum wage will be more than $40 an hour, up from about $32 an hour in the previous contract. His starting salary will be more than $30 an hour, compared to $18 an hour under his previous contract.
“Everyone is going to be in this transition period,” said Laura Dickerson, regional director for the United Auto Workers union, which represents districts in southeastern Michigan. “It’s coming and we have to accept it.”
However, instability has become apparent in recent months.
Ford’s electric battery plant under construction in Marshall Town was initially expected to create 2,500 jobs. The company recently lowered its forecast to 1,700 people.
Our Next Energy, a Michigan startup known as ONE, is completing a battery factory in Van Buren Township, a commuter town between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Technicians oversee a series of machines that unwind rolls of metal foil and press fit them into battery cells.
Dan Pilarz, 46, had worked for General Motors for nearly 20 years when he joined the ONE plant last June as senior manager of maintenance.
“Kids came up to me and said, ‘You guys are destroying this environment,'” Pillars said. “‘When are you going to do something about it?'”
He is excited to be a part of the next phase of Michigan’s innovation history. He knows the risks, too.
Our company, Next Energy, recently laid off 137 people, about a quarter of the company’s total, including several at the Van Buren plant, citing pressure from investors to cut costs.
“It’s definitely a roller coaster right now,” Pilarz said. “But someone will survive and someone will build these vehicles. Why not me?