STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
All this week, we are following news of a possible strike and last-minute negotiations between the Big Three automakers in Detroit and the United Auto Workers. One complicating factor is uncertainty over the transition to electric vehicles and how that will affect U.S. auto jobs. NPR's Camila Domonoske reports.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: The negotiations aren't over whether or not to make electric vehicles. The UAW and the automakers agree that's happening. As UAW President Shawn Fain put it in a virtual rally this past weekend...
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SHAWN FAIN: We support a green economy. You know, we have to get behind this. We have to have a plan that we can live on.
DOMONOSKE: But he says this transition makes it more important that assembly line and battery workers get good pay and benefits.
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FAIN: If we don't secure this work and we don't secure it at a living standard, at Big Three standards, it's not going to be a good future for anyone.
DOMONOSKE: The union is asking for more than 40% raises, plus pensions, cost-of-living increases and job security. Auto companies say, despite high profits, they cannot afford that. And one big reason why - the high cost of the electric transition.
ED KIM: There is some truth to this.
DOMONOSKE: Ed Kim, an analyst with AutoPacific, says, yeah, this is expensive for companies.
KIM: Yes, they've been very profitable, but they're also, at the same time, very eager to reinvest those profits into their EV product development.
DOMONOSKE: Auto companies have already pointed to the high cost of the EV transition to explain painful cuts. Take Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, which made $18 billion last year. It recently shut down a plant in Belvidere, Ill., citing the cost of switching to EVs. But the plant, which made the Jeep Cherokee, had seen layoffs even before this year. Patty Ellison's shift was cut in 2019.
PATTY ELLISON: It's pretty much turned my whole life upside down.
DOMONOSKE: Given the choice between a layoff or a transfer, she transferred to Michigan. Her husband still lives in Illinois. She spoke to me on a five-hour drive back to visit him. She gets home about once a month.
ELLISON: Anything but convenient.
DOMONOSKE: And when I asked her about Stellantis' explanation that they shut her old plant because of the cost of switching to EVs, she was skeptical.
ELLISON: It sounds like an excuse to me. If they're going to make electric vehicles, why can't we make them there in Belvidere?
DOMONOSKE: She'd be happy to build an EV. But there is one thing that does give Ellison pause.
ELLISON: They say it takes less people to build electric vehicles than it does a combustion vehicle.
DOMONOSKE: The union is concerned about this, too. On the other hand, new battery plants are popping up to power those new EVs, with lots of jobs, and the UAW is working to organize them. Meanwhile, the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into electric vehicles, and the union has been pressuring the Biden administration to make sure that workers feel a benefit from that federal money, not just to the corporations. Patty Ellison isn't sure what impact the shift to EVs will have on workers like her.
ELLISON: I don't know. It remains to be seen.
DOMONOSKE: But she says she's cautiously optimistic. One of the things her union is pushing for is the reopening of her old plant. And if that happens, analysts think it will probably be building EVs. Camila Domonoske, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "BLUE TRAIN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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