In a new story from The Intercept, Biden’s strategy for allocating billions of dollars in grants and loans to corporations to implement his Green Energy plan is getting strong pushback from labor unions.
In late June, the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office granted a $9.2 billion loan — its largest ever — to Ford and its joint venture partner, the Korean firm BlueOval SK, to build battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. The cash injection follows other projects, like a sprawling chip manufacturing plant and close to a dozen solar manufacturing sites across the South.
The loan, issued from the Department of Energy office that drew billions of dollars for investments in green energy under the Inflation Reduction Act, stems from Biden’s pledge to make half of all vehicles sold in 2030 zero emission. That undertaking means more plants that manufacture components of gas-powered vehicles are sure to close in coming years. Those jobs are overwhelmingly union and heavily based in swing states or blue states.
This is not happenstance. The strategy seeks to mimic the way the Military Industrial Complex spreads work across states to increase support for spending on its projects. Only it appears to have a decidedly bipartisan flavor to it, with the biggest outlays going to deep red Southern states most opposed to green energy.
So how is that working out? Apparently the response from Republicans in those states was to vote against the IRA and continue to rail against green energy. And these infusions of federal dollars, the majority of which is coming from blue states, will bring tens of thousands of jobs to Right to Work states lacking unions. At the same time, existing plants in the North with labor unions will be closing. This represents a shift in power from blue and purple states to deep red states, and a shift from good paying union jobs to lower wage non-union jobs. And the likely outcome will be to further empower the very politicians who are voting against the Green Energy subsidies.
What Biden is doing is politically insane, environmentally bankrupt, and it’s poor economics,” Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America and board member of Our Revolution, told The Intercept. “The White House and my old friend John Podesta” — who is overseeing the federal government’s spending of climate incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act — “should have labor-centered guidelines about where these investments are going, whether it’s in purple states like Michigan, whether it’s in Philadelphia, whether it’s in Ohio, there are acres and acres of devastated industrial landscape that need new investment as opposed to cornfields. The total lack of consideration for workers could certainly make the difference in 2024.
And the UAW is voting with its feet:
Despite the tailwinds, the Biden campaign will need to court every voter it can to clinch the election in what is still a purple state. Republicans, who will also be vying to gain a Senate seat in Michigan, have signaled that they believe the state is competitive given the election year turnout boost that a Trump candidacy will provide.
The UAW’s 130,000 members in Michigan — almost the same number of votes that made the difference for Biden three years ago — form an important voting bloc. In addition to their individual votes, UAW members are active donors and get-out-the-vote organizers. The union’s newly elected president, Shawn Fain, recently said the UAW would continue withholding the endorsement of its hundreds of thousands of members for Biden’s reelection until more progress was made on supporting members through the green energy transition.
Fain also lashed out at the president when news of the Energy Department loan to Ford broke, reminding him that union support is a privilege, not a right.
“We have been absolutely clear that the switch to electric engine jobs, battery production and other [electric vehicle] manufacturing cannot become a race to the bottom,” Fain said in a June 23 statement. “Not only is the federal government not using its power to turn the tide — they’re actively funding the race to the bottom with billions in public money.
This obsession with appeasing Republicans, even at the cost of our own Party, has simply got to stop.