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**SEPTEMBER 13, 2023**
On the Prospect website
* Luke Goldstein reports from Washington on the first day of Google's
historic monopolization trial
* David Dayen looks at the tragic reversal of the country's most
effective poverty-fighting measures
* Harold Meyerson writes about a big win for California's fast-food
workers
in the struggle for representation and fair pay
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Beware the Wrong Auto Deal
An agreement with generous raises that allowed for a low-wage, non-union
EV sector would be far worse than a strike.
The White House is expressing great confidence, for public consumption,
that the UAW strike threatened against the Big Three automakers for
midnight tomorrow will not occur. "I'm not worried about a strike,"
the president said as he arrived in Philadelphia for a Labor Day speech.
"I don't think it's going to happen." His press aides and top
officials have been telling reporters the same thing.
But the president is whistling past the graveyard. Whether a strike
occurs depends heavily on what the White House does behind the scenes in
the next 24 hours. And there are ways that even an averted strike could
backfire on both Biden and the UAW.
Against a background of record industry profits, the auto union is
making two different sets of demands. First, they want a large raise, of
over 40 percent over the life of the four-year contract. (This is the
same percentage raise
that the Big Three's chief executives have received over the previous
four years.) They also want a commitment that the electric-vehicle
sector, the future of the industry, must be union and covered by the Big
Three's existing master agreements-including battery suppliers and
joint ventures between the Big Three and other battery companies.
The automakers initially proposed raises in the range of 9 to 14
percent, plus a one-time bonus. As of Monday, the two sides were
somewhat closer on wages
,
but had made no progress on the EV transition.
"The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle
transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers," the
UAW's new militant president Shawn Fain wrote to his members on May 2.
"The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom."
Fain is threatening to withhold the union's endorsement of Biden's
re-election unless the administration uses its leverage to back a just
transition to electric vehicles for workers.
According to my sources, the industry strategy is to make the bargaining
entirely about wages and working conditions, offer the autoworkers a
very generous raise of more than 30 percent, but concede nothing when it
comes to the EV sector, and hope that the union takes the deal. That
would be a disaster. It would represent the union being bought off for
present workers at the expense of an increasingly non-union auto future.
Too much of the decline of organized labor over the past several decades
has followed exactly this pattern.
The industry hope is to put Fain in a bind, since such a deal might look
very good to the rank and file. It would take gumption and leadership
for Fain to reject the deal and tell the industry to come back with a
bargain that included EVs.
A deal that avoided tomorrow's threatened strike, but at the expense
of a good-jobs future for EVs, might also look good to the White House.
The headline would be: Auto Strike Averted. But Biden should think
again. Those headlines would be a cheap sugar high.
In the election, Republicans would laugh at Biden for throwing massive
amounts of public money at the EV industry only to produce crappy jobs
and weaken his union allies over the long term.
The way for the White House to head this off is for Biden to get on the
phone with auto executives, and warn them not to try to buy off the UAW
with a deal that doesn't include a unionized, good-jobs future for EV
workers. If auto execs are willing to enter into serious negotiations
about EVs as well as raises for current workers, the strike deadline
could well be extended. Both the White House and the UAW need to be on
guard against a defeat masquerading as a victory.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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Justice Department Says Google 'Flexed Its Muscle' as a Monopolist
On day one of the historic monopolization trial, the government put
Google's chief economist on the stand to show that the company valued
default status on browsers and devices. BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN
The Poverty Yo-Yo
New Census Bureau statistics show that abandoning the successful
anti-poverty interventions of the pandemic has put the nation right back
where it started. BY DAVID DAYEN
Half a Million California Workers Get a Raise-and a Seat at the Table
Fast-food workers compel McDonald's and Starbucks to abandon a ballot
measure that would have squelched both. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
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