UAW Pushes for Green Jobs And Affordability in California

Can unions lead the push toward an environmentally sustainable future, and secure more good jobs in the process? With the Trump administration attacking federal investments in green industries from electrical vehicles to wind, the United Auto Workers is attempting this strategy at the state level in California.

Last summer the union issued a report titled “Organize, Industrialize, Decarbonize! A Pro-Worker, Green Industrial Policy for California”, calling for the state “to move boldly and wield all tools at its disposal to bring about the kind of economic transformation necessary to decarbonize and raise working-class living standards.”

The report comes from UAW Region 6, which represents 120,000 active and retired members in Western states. Most of the region’s members work in higher education, though some work in aerospace, auto, and casinos. The union has been attempting to organize the 10,000 workers at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California.

One-third of California workers make less than $20 an hour, and climate change is driving up the state’s already high cost of living. The UAW wants California “to embrace a bold new economic strategy to create tens of thousands of new union jobs, rapidly slash greenhouse gas emissions, and drive down energy costs for working-class communities.” That would mean targeted investments in electric vehicles and batteries, offshore wind, and heat pump manufacturing and installations.

WILDFIRES

Global fossil-fuel emissions are breaking records every year, further warming the planet, worsening extreme weather, and pushing Earth toward dangerous tipping points like the collapse of Arctic ice sheets. In California, the impacts of man-made climate change are all too apparent: devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area last year caused $135 billion in property damage and lost income.

“The wildfires were a horrific reminder of the climate crisis,” said UAW Region 6 Director Mike Miller. “Thousands of working people lost their homes; some lost their lives. We need to do whatever we can to reduce carbon emissions.”

California’s Senate Bill 32, passed in 2016, requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Subsequent legislation and executive orders have set a target of net zero emissions by 2045.

Decarbonization will require an estimated $60 billion to $80 billion of private and public investment every year for the next decade. The UAW says that sum “pales in comparison to the monetary costs of climate change.”

“We can’t afford not to decarbonize,” says the report.

WHO SETS THE TERMS

Region 6 argues that unions cannot sit back and let corporations dictate investment decisions based on what’s profitable. Instead, unions have to put forward their own economic vision and push governments to adopt pro-worker industrial policy.

The report defines industrial policy as “coordinated government action to proactively shape what goods and services an economy produces, how they are produced, and how they are distributed.”

For instance, the government could regulate prices, develop public enterprises or state-backed joint ventures, or use its purchasing power to buy large quantities of products like heat pumps or electric vehicles to help establish a market for them.

“By not using the industrial policy tools at their disposal, state governments are simply ceding authority over how their economies develop to powerful companies whose bottom line is their only measure of success,” says Region 6.

The private sector’s bias toward short-term profits means green industries may never attract the type of patient investments required to succeed in the long run. For that reason, the union argues that significant government intervention is needed to direct investment into priority sectors.

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“There’s not the same level of industrial policy in the U.S. that helped win World War II, or the federal investments in scientific research that helped drive the postwar economy, or even the investments in aerospace in California,” said Miller. “There’s not those deliberate moves to pick winners and losers in the market to create a particular policy outcome, and we think there needs to be.”

FIGHTING FOR GOOD JOBS

The union argues that industrial policy should not just be used to advance green manufacturing and energy, but also to make sure these industries provide good union jobs, and products that are affordable for working-class consumers.

A broad array of policy tools will be necessary to achieve these goals. For instance, consumer rebate programs can help grow a market, but do not ensure that production will be done by local workers. Government subsidies can attract investment but don’t mean good jobs unless strong labor conditions are placed on employers.

“We want to make sure that our tax dollars aren’t just passed through to the bank accounts of shareholders, but that they’re shared with workers in the form of good manufacturing jobs in the electric vehicle and other green industries,” said Miller.

Creating tens of thousands of good working-class jobs would also increase workers’ purchasing power, so that more of them could buy products like heat pumps and electric vehicles.

INEQUALITY AN OBSTACLE

Inequality is a real obstacle to achieving a green transition. The report describes climate change, inequality, and affordability as “mutually reinforcing crises.” Currently the top 5 percent of California households take in 40 percent of the state’s income.

“The rich can easily afford to install rooftop solar panels and battery storage systems, upgrade to a heat pump, and purchase a zero-emission vehicle without having to cut back on other spending,” the UAW says. “The state’s working class, on the other hand, struggles to cover even the basics. Households making less than $70,000 a year—the bottom 60 percent in California—spend more on food, housing, transportation, and health care than their annual post-tax income.”

These material realities are a major political obstacle to green transitions. For instance, utility companies are sparking a backlash by raising rates on consumers to finance infrastructure upgrades and new energy generation. And a majority of Californians oppose the state’s ban on new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and proposals that all new housing use only electric appliances.

So the UAW argues that industrial policy must aim at both lowering costs and raising incomes. “Only by creating union jobs, raising labor standards, and targeting new opportunities to those most in need can we generate the massive purchasing power to realize California’s massive potential demand for clean-tech goods,” says the report.

These jobs are particularly important given the state’s economic trajectory. There are fewer private-sector union jobs in California today than there were 40 years ago, even though the state has added 5.7 million jobs in that period.

Union density in the state’s manufacturing industry is just 5.3 percent. “In terms of real purchasing power, production wages in California are closer to right-to-work Texas and Georgia than to historic union strongholds like Michigan or Ohio,” says the report. And as the economy moves away from fossil fuels, California stands to lose significant numbers of its remaining good blue-collar union jobs in the oil and gas industry, while jobs in new green industries pay significantly less and have much less of a union presence.

BILL VETOED

In September, California’s legislature passed a bill based on the report, Senate Bill 787. It targeted the development of supply chains and worker standards in three priority sectors: electric vehicles and batteries, offshore wind, and heat pumps.

But Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in October, calling it redundant with ongoing work. The UAW says it is talking with his administration about how to work together to achieve the bill’s goals. The legislative push also led to the creation of an industrial policy committee within the California AFL-CIO.

“In the labor movement, we’re used to the rich and powerful telling us what is and isn’t possible,” says Region 6 in the report. “And we’re used to proving them wrong.”