What UAW’s Chattanooga win means for electric cars

Apr 22, 2024

People celebrate after the United Auto Workers received enough votes to form a union.

People celebrate at a vote watch party Friday in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after workers at a Chattanooga car factory voted to join the United Auto Workers. | Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

President Joe Biden is pushing to supercharge domestic production of electric vehicles. He also wants to expand union protections in the auto industry.

Those dual ambitions got a boost Friday, when workers at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the United Auto Workers. The UAW has tried and failed for years to unionize the plant, which produces vehicles including the all-electric ID.4 crossover SUV.

The vote is one of the labor movement’s biggest victories in the South in years, writes Nick Niedzwiadek. It comes after last year’s deal between the UAW and the Detroit Three car companies, which helped ensure union workers would play a role in the transition to electric vehicles.

“The VW victory is proof that the future of the U.S. auto industry is union, from the burgeoning battery belt of the Southeast to the legacy auto communities of the Midwest,” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, an advocacy organization representing labor unions and clean energy groups, said in a statement to POLITICO’s Power Switch.

The administration has tasked automakers operating in the U.S. with rapidly transitioning their production lines toward all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Biden, the self-proclaimed “most pro-union president in history,” has at the same time thrown his political weight behind unionization efforts in the auto industry — even joining a picket line outside a General Motors plant last fall.

Republicans have framed both goals as job killers. Last week’s UAW vote in Chattanooga was opposed by local and regional Republican officials in an effort led by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

The issue is perhaps salient to Ivey in particular, because the UAW is scheduled to hold a vote next month to unionize Mercedes-Benz workers at a plant in Tuscaloosa that produces three all-electric vehicle models.

“We want to keep good paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector here,” Ivey and six other Republican Southern governors, including Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, wrote in a letter earlier this month. “A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.”

Biden pushed back against this argument in a White House press release Friday.

“Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: There is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose,” Biden said.

EV sales growth has slowed, putting the pace of adoption far below what is needed to meet Biden’s goals, as I reported last week. But automakers are also continuing to bet on the technology: Manufacturers are expected to invest at least $1 trillion in the transition to electric and hybrid vehicles by the end of the decade, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution.

“It’s a really good time to be in the automaking business,” Walsh said. “These companies are happy to take federal incentives to build EVs. They just don’t want working people to share in the profits.”

It's Monday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host today, Jack Quinn. Arianna will be back soon! Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to jquinn@eenews.net.

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Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: California Sen. Alex Padilla sits down with Annie Snyder to discuss the future of drinking water access and quality in the U.S.

Power Centers

Wind turbines in Block Island Sound east of Montauk, New York.

Wind turbines in Block Island Sound east of Montauk, New York, are pictured. | Bruce Bennett/AFP via Getty Images

Offshore headwinds in New York

New York has nixed three offshore wind projects, citing GE Vernova's decision to cancel the development of the largest-ever offshore wind turbine, Benjamin Storrow and Heather Richards write.

State authorities deemed the projects no longer viable without the supersized turbine, taking an estimated 4 gigawatts of planned offshore wind capacity out of the project pipeline. That's nearly half of the state’s goal to build 9 GW in offshore wind by 2035.

“It was to be a big part of New York’s portfolio — and kind of the linchpin — in getting to 9 gigawatts by 2035,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance.

The decision from the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority comes after numerous delays in state offshore wind projects. In January, for example, BP and Equinor backed out of their New York contract for the 1.2-GW Empire Wind 2, calling it a "reset" amid high interest rates, supply chain constraints and opposition from communities living near planned transmission infrastructure.

RFK Jr.'s climate views to left and right of Biden

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president on a climate platform that he hopes appeals to supporters of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Scott Waldman reports.

In a recent interview with POLITICO's E&E News, Kennedy said he is trying to craft a climate policy that “makes sense to skeptics and activists alike.” He criticized the administration’s clean energy subsidies, while saying that voters won’t respond well to climate policies that impose “totalitarian controls.” But he also called for a permanent ban on liquefied natural gas exports, going much further than Biden's temporary pause on LNG export approvals.

He also took aim at the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies for carbon capture projects.

“[Biden has] played into the hands of the carbon industry by focusing on geoengineering and carbon capture, and that is to me a disastrous endpoint,” Kennedy said. “It’s disastrous from an environmental point of view, and it also is just a subsidy for big carbon.”

Kennedy has drawn criticism from both the Biden and Trump campaigns, as well as his own family members (who have endorsed Biden). A dozen green groups also disavowed Kennedy on Friday, calling him a “science denier” whose candidacy stands to hand Trump the presidency.

EU to take on Russia’s ‘shadow’ oil fleet

The European Commission is planning to target unmarked vessels transporting Russian oil and gas products in a new round of sanctions against Russian-affiliated actors, Stuart Lau writes.

Pending deliberations, there could be "actions against owners, operators, insurance companies in [any] third country that Russia today uses to make the shadow fleet possible," Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told POLITICO Europe on Monday.

The Russian “shadow” oil fleet consists of over 1,400 ships with opaque ownership, tasked with circumventing Western sanctions on the Russian oil and gas industry.

The fleet "is such a large problem ... when it comes to the money that it fuels the war chest of Russia," Billström said.

In Other News

Trending up: Global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise at record levels.

Trending down: Residential electricity bills in the U.S. grew slower than baseline inflation in 2023.

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A worker installs solar panels in Pomona, California.

A worker installs solar panels in Pomona, California. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

With “Earth Week” underway, EPA is releasing $7 billion in funding for solar energy projects in low- and middle-income communities.

People who live near large solar facilities have generally positive views of the projects, according to a new national lab survey.

High interest rates are a bigger threat to renewable energy projects than they are to oil and gas, according to a new report.

That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.

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