Among the issues at stake in the United Auto Workers’ historic strike, the most significant is protections for workers amid the accelerating shift to electric vehicles.
The strike represents just one of the leading skirmishes in the renewable energy revolution that is poised to transform not just the auto industry but the global economy.
Historically, industrial breakthroughs have led to the exploitation, rather than the elevation, of Black Americans. The development of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin led to a nearly five-fold increase in the number of enslaved laborers in the south. Advances in medicine came at the expense of Black bodies, used without consent.
The automobile industry, at least for a time, has been an exception. As Black Americans fled to the industrial centers of the north during the Great Migration, Ford Motor Co. hired them at a time when few other companies were willing. The support of the Detroit Urban League and other Black civil rights groups were key to Ford’s recognition of the UAW in 1941. Over the next several decades, jobs in the auto industry helped to build a thriving Black middle class.
Just as Black autoworkers potentially have the most to lose as the industry shifts to electric vehicle production, Black Americans as a group have the most to lose in a poorly-managed renewable energy revolution.
The wind, solar and battery storage industries already employ more than 500,000 Americans across all 50 states, and these sectors are expected to create between 800,000 and 1.3 million new jobs by 2030. But a failure to hold employers accountable to standards of equity and fairness could result in history repeating itself with an exploitive “race to the bottom.”
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, for example, attached no conditions for labor standards or equity for receiving funds. Tesla, which received one of the largest shares of funds awarded to renewable energy projects, has just been sued for racial discrimination by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. California’s Civil Rights Department also has filed a suit, alleging that Black workers are “severely underrepresented” in management positions at Tesla.
A wealth-creation opportunity
By contrast, the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden last August, includes key provisions to help ensure the economic benefits of the clean energy transition are equitably shared.
Under the law, clean energy companies must pay prevailing wages and use registered apprentices. The Chicago Urban League, along with four other Urban League affiliates, is among the organizations connecting those registered apprentices with clean energy job opportunities through a partnership with the Center for Energy Workforce Development.
Similarly, the Biden administration has tied workplace rights and fair wages to a $15.5 billion package of funding and loans primarily focused on retooling existing factories for the transition to electric vehicles.
To be eligible for the Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grants, projects must contribute to the president’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in America’s workforce and ensure every community benefits from the transition to a clean energy future.
Transitioning the U.S. economy to renewable energy is perhaps the greatest wealth-creation opportunity in American history. We are going to have to fight, as the UAW is fighting, to make sure that wealth isn’t funneled straight into the coffers of billionaires only to widen the racial wealth gap even further.
Marc H. Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002. He writes a twice-monthly column for the Sun-Times.
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