The burgeoning electric vehicle market is raising the stakes in an age-old feud between labor unions and Republicans. GOP-led Southern states are angling to use cheap labor to leverage federal dollars and attract potential investors, including foreign ones, writes Mike Lee. That’s at odds with labor unions working to ensure the green economy is built by unionized workers with higher-paid jobs. Unions scored a series of high-profile wins at some Southern facilities that manufacture EVs in recent months, prompting at least three GOP states to pass anti-union bills: Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. Those new laws use economic incentives to urge companies to make it harder for unions to organize. The pushback is partly political: Organized labor turns out voters, and those voters often lean Democrat. That can make a big difference in a swing state like Georgia. In 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Georgia by about 11,000 votes. Union voters make up only 4 to 5 percent of Georgia’s workforce, but they turned out in bigger numbers, accounting for 9 to 10 percent of the electorate, according to the AFL-CIO. The union hopes to repeat that success this year, putting Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on high alert about his state’s role in the presidential race. “The people orchestrating these [labor] actions are partisan activists who want nothing more than to see the free market brought to a screeching halt,” he said earlier this year. The Biden administration has made it a priority to boost labor unions, with Democrats’ 2022 climate law including provisions designed to encourage union organization at companies that receive manufacturing grants and loans. But it’s unclear that will translate to unified union support for Vice President Kamala Harris. The Teamsters union, whose members heavily support Trump, declined to endorse a presidential candidate for this cycle, although some of its local unions have backed Harris.
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