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Corporate Media Reluctant to Report on UAW Victory From Workers' Perspective Paige Oamek ([link removed])


After a historic six weeks on strike, United Auto Workers members ratified new contracts ([link removed]) with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis (which owns Dodge/Chrysler). Workers are set to receive 25% raises over the life of their contract, cost-of-living allowances tied to inflation, the right to strike over plant closures, and more benefits in their new contract.

But outlets like the Wall Street Journal (10/30/23 ([link removed].) ), New York Times (11/9/23 ([link removed].) ) and Bloomberg (11/9/23 ([link removed]) ), still struggling to report on labor from a workers’ perspective (see FAIR.org, 9/26/23 ([link removed]) ), instead focused on the economy at large or predictive reporting. Throughout the strike, media seemed interested in any story—how the union will wreck the economy ([link removed]) , Musk’s potential countermoves
([link removed]) , why the EV transition is doomed ([link removed]) —that didn’t focus on bread-and-butter gains for union members.


** Unions vs. the economy
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CBS Detroit: Economic losses exceed $9.3 billion as UAW strike continues

CBS Detroit (10/23/23 ([link removed]) ) didn't put the big number ([link removed]) in perspective—or acknowledge that its source worked for the companies ([link removed]) the UAW was on strike against.

Bloomberg (11/7/23 ([link removed]) , 11/9/23 ([link removed]) ) reported that the work stoppage cost the auto industry billions of dollars. Others mourned the revenue loss for car companies, running headlines about the millions or billions lost (Fortune, 11/30/23 ([link removed]) ; CNN, 10/31/23 ([link removed]) ; PBS, 10/24/23 ([link removed]) ).

Meanwhile, on earnings calls in late October, GM reported ([link removed]) that total company revenue was up 5%, to more than $44 billion, boosting profits to $3.6 billion. And Ford assured investors ([link removed]) that “our revenue remains strong, up 11%.” As Axios (11/30/23 ([link removed]) ) pointed out, while Stellantis said the labor action cost it $3.2 billion, “it also reported that net revenues so far this year were at $48 billion, up 7% ([link removed]) compared to the same quarter in 2022.”

CBS News Detroit (10/23/23 ([link removed]) ) said that economic losses to the nation as a whole had surpassed $9.3 billion, citing Anderson Economic Group, consultants whose clients include ([link removed]) General Motors and Ford, who had previously said that even a 10-day UAW strike could cost the US economy ([link removed]) $5.6 billion, a line that was parroted throughout the media (Bloomberg, 9/10/23 ([link removed]) ; New York Times, 9/13/23 ([link removed]) ; Forbes, 9/15/23
([link removed]) ; see FAIR.org, 9/26/23 ([link removed]) ). Even if the strike had cost the economy $9 billion, for perspective, that’s 1/30th of 1% of the US GDP.

As more workers continued to join the strike across the country and tentative deals were made, outlets like the Wall Street Journal (10/30/23 ([link removed]) ) bemoaned rising labor costs. It even went as far (10/31/23 ([link removed]) ) as to warn that high wages were “a potential complication for the Federal Reserve's fight to lower inflation.”

“Even before the raise they are striking for, Detroit's unionized auto workers are probably the best paid in the world after factoring in benefits such as healthcare,” said the Journal (10/11/23 ([link removed]) ). “Their employers can afford it for now, but high labor costs box them in strategically.”

However, at the same time, GM CEO Mary Barra bragged to investors about the company's profitability in an October 24 earnings call (Motley Fool, 10/24/23 ([link removed]) ). “It's been clear coming out of Covid that the wages and benefits across the US economy would need to increase because of inflation and other factors," she added.


** Unions vs. green energy
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NPR: Auto companies are racing to meet an electric future, and transforming the workforce

"These [electric] vehicles have fewer parts, and making them will eventually require fewer workers," NPR (10/1/22 ([link removed]) ) reported. But it isn't necessarily so ([link removed]) .

In its write-up about Biden taking a "victory lap" in the wake of the agreement, Bloomberg (11/7/23 ([link removed]) ) wrote that "the strike put Biden’s pro-union bonafides up against his clean-energy push" for electric vehicles, because "union leaders and workers worried that push would cost them jobs, reduce wages and favor non-unionized companies."

A similar piece in the New York Times (11/9/23 ([link removed].) ) said the president made the case for clean energy, even “as many workers fear the president’s climate change agenda could endanger their jobs.” However, later in the same article, reporters Lisa Friedman and Neal Boudette quoted Syracuse University's David Popp, who studies the economics of technological change, saying that “there doesn’t seem to be a consensus yet on whether" electric vehicles will require fewer workers.

The reporters also floated as a fact that “it takes fewer than half the laborers to assemble an all-electric vehicle as it does to build a gasoline-powered car.” Similarly, there is no consensus or data to back up this claim.

So where did it come from? Ford estimated in 2017 that there could be a 30% reduction in labor hours per unit for electric vehicles. In 2019, Morgan Stanley’s analyst Adam Jonas (CNBC, 3/15/19 ([link removed]) ) said tech start-ups like Tesla and Rivian could build electric vehicles at “a 50% reduction in direct labor...or more.”

Auto executives continue to repeat the line that as EVs have fewer moving parts, they will require less labor. In 2022, Ford president and CEO Jim Farley told reporters ([link removed]) , “It takes 40% less labor to make an electric car.” The America First Policy Institute, led by ([link removed]) former Trump administration officials and endorsed ([link removed]) by Trump himself, put out a widely-cited research report (7/13/23 ([link removed]) ) citing the estimates from Ford themselves in 2017 and Farley’s comments in 2022.

But according to CNN Business (10/6/23 ([link removed]) ), "Several research reports…found little total difference in the labor hour requirements of EV manufacturing compared to gas-powered cars." For instance, a recent Carnegie Mellon University study (7/13/22 ([link removed]) ) estimated the EV supply chain could require more labor ([link removed]) than gas-powered cars when taking other components, such as batteries, into account.

As CNN's report demonstrated, such information was readily available to journalists during the UAW strike—and dispelling a false talking point would have been a very useful role for journalism to play. But most were content to simply repeat Ford’s talking point, no questions asked.


** Demonizing union leaders
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NYT: New U.A.W. Chief Has a Nonnegotiable Demand: Eat the Rich

A New York Times profile (10/5/23 ([link removed]) ) described UAW president Shawn Fain as "a confrontational figure who vilifies the automakers while alarming Wall Street."

Media have also struggled to understand this new wave of union activism, often lifting up stories of highly ([link removed]) educated or “relatively privileged ([link removed]) ” "salts ([link removed]) "—employees who join a workplace with the intent of forming a union. For example, Bloomberg (4/3/23 ([link removed]) ) calls them “the mostly secret ingredient in a once-in-a-generation wave of union organizing.” Others have made efforts to put a spotlight ([link removed]) on specific ([link removed]) organizers,
like Jaz Brizack ([link removed]) or Chris Smalls. ([link removed])

At the UAW, that spotlight was put on the reformist UAW president Shawn Fain and his team. “Led by Fain and a cohort of outside labor activists, [the UAW leadership] drove a campaign that company executives have called acrimonious and theatrical,” described the Wall Street Journal (11/14/23 ([link removed]) ). The paper also found the time to run nearly 1,000 words (11/7/23 ([link removed]) ) on Fain’s "Eat the Rich" shirt. That article followed a 2,500-word piece (10/30/23 ([link removed]) ) about how "Three Young Activists Who Never Worked in an Auto Factory Helped Deliver Huge Win for the UAW."

Fain was elected UAW president earlier this year by less than 500 votes (Labor Notes, 3/3/23 ([link removed]) ), running against a scandal-ridden caucus that had been in power for decades. Fain won after a rule change let union members vote directly for leadership, instead of leaving the choice to chapter officials.

He brought on a communications expert who worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as a lawyer and a former labor journalist who have both worked with the NewsGuild, among other unions. Like the Wall Street Journal article (10/30/23 ([link removed]) ) that painted the UAW’s leadership as outside agitators, others describe him and his team as “adversarial ([link removed]) ” or “socialist-aligned.” ([link removed])

However, Fain was elected in the most democratic election of the UAW’s recent history, in a union previously described as having a “legacy of corruption.” ([link removed]) Some blame Fain for promising too much to members on the contract, or said his “demands have gone too far,” ([link removed]) such as calling for a 32-hour work week at 40 hours of pay for autoworkers. "I want to be clear on this point—I didn't raise members' expectations,” Fain rebutted on one of his many Facebook Live posts (10/13/23 ([link removed]) ). “Our broken economy is what's raising our members' expectations, and our members are right to be angry."


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