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    UAW Standoff Poses Risk for Biden’s Electric Vehicle Commitment

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    A looming auto industry strike could test the president’s commitment to making electric vehicles a source of well-paying union jobs.President Biden has been highly attuned to the politics of electric vehicles, helping to enact billions in subsidies to create new manufacturing jobs and going out of his way to court the United Automobile Workers union.But as the union and the big U.S. automakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — hurtle toward a strike deadline set for Thursday night, the political challenge posed by the industry’s transition to electric cars may be only beginning.The union, under its new president, Shawn Fain, wants workers who make electric vehicle components like batteries to benefit from the better pay and labor standards that the roughly 150,000 U.A.W. members enjoy at the three automakers. Most battery plants are not unionized.The Detroit automakers counter that these workers are typically employed in joint ventures with foreign manufacturers that the U.S. automakers don’t wholly control. The companies say that even if they could raise wages for battery workers to the rate set under their national U.A.W. contract, doing so could make them uncompetitive with nonunion rivals, like Tesla.And then there is former President Donald J. Trump, who is running to unseat Mr. Biden and has said the president’s clean energy policies are costing American jobs and raising prices for consumers.White House officials say Mr. Biden will still be able to deliver on his promise of high-quality jobs and a strong domestic electric vehicle industry.The head of the United Automobile Workers, Shawn Fain, center, wants his union’s wages and labor standards to apply to nonunion workers who make electric vehicle components.Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“The president’s policies have always been geared toward ensuring not only that our electric vehicle future was made in America with American jobs,” said Gene Sperling, Mr. Biden’s liaison to the U.A.W. and the auto industry, “but that it would promote good union jobs and a just transition” for current autoworkers whose jobs are threatened.But in public at least, the president has so far spoken only in vague terms about wages. Last month, he said that the transition to electric vehicles should enable workers to “make good wages and benefits to support their families” and that when union jobs were replaced with new jobs, they should go to union members and pay a “commensurate” wage. He is encouraging the companies and the union to keep bargaining and reach an agreement, one of Mr. Biden’s economic advisers, Jared Bernstein, told reporters on Wednesday.A strike could force Mr. Biden to be more explicit and choose between his commitment to workers and the need to broker a compromise that averts a costly long-term shutdown.“Battery workers need to be paid the same amount as U.A.W. workers at the current Big Three,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who has promoted government investments in new technologies.Mr. Khanna added, “It’s how we contrast with Trump: We’re for creating good-paying manufacturing jobs across the Midwest.”At the heart of the debate is whether the shift to electric vehicles, which have fewer parts and generally require less labor to assemble than gas-powered cars, will accelerate the decline of unionized work in the industry.Foreign and domestic automakers have announced tens of thousands of new U.S.-based electric vehicle and battery jobs in response to the subsidies that Mr. Biden helped enact. But most of those jobs are not unionized, and many are in the South or West, where the U.A.W. has struggled to win over autoworkers. The union has tried and failed to organize workers at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif., and Southern plants owned by Volkswagen and Nissan.A Ford Lightning plant in Dearborn, Mich. The U.A.W. worries that letting battery makers pay lower wages will allow G.M., Ford and Stellantis to replace much of their current U.S. work force with cheaper labor.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesAs a result, the union has focused its efforts on battery workers employed directly or indirectly by G.M., Ford and Stellantis. The going wage for this work tends to be far below the roughly $32 an hour that veteran U.A.W. members make under their existing contracts with three companies.Legally, employees of the three manufacturers can’t strike over the pay of battery workers employed by joint ventures. But many U.A.W. members worry that letting battery manufacturers pay far lower wages will allow G.M., Ford and Stellantis to replace much of their current U.S. work force with cheaper labor, so they are seeking a large wage increase for those workers.“What we want is for the E.V. jobs to be U.A.W. jobs under our master agreements,” said Scott Houldieson, chairperson of Unite All Workers for Democracy, a group within the union that helped propel Mr. Fain to the presidency.The union’s officials have pressed the auto companies to address their concerns about battery workers before its members vote on a new contract. They say the companies can afford to pay more because they collectively earned about $250 billion in North America over the past decade, according to union estimates.But the auto companies, while acknowledging that they have been profitable in recent years, point out that the transition to electric vehicles is very expensive. Industry executives have suggested that it is hard to know how quickly consumers will embrace electric vehicles and that companies needed flexibility to adjust.Even if labor costs were not an issue, said Corey Cantor, an electric vehicle analyst at the energy research firm BloombergNEF, it could take the Big Three several years to catch up to Tesla, which makes about 60 percent of fully electric vehicles sold in the United States.A strike could force Mr. Biden to choose between his commitment to workers and the need to avert a costly shutdown of the U.S. auto industry.Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesData from BloombergNEF show that G.M., Ford and Stellantis together sold fewer than 100,000 battery electric vehicles in the United States last year; in 2017, Tesla alone sold 50,000. It took Tesla another five years to top half a million U.S. sales. (The Big Three also sold nearly 80,000 plug-in hybrids last year.)The three established automakers had hoped to use the transition to electric cars to bring their costs more in line with their competitors, said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, a research firm. If they can’t, he added, they will have to look for savings elsewhere.In a statement, Stellantis said its battery joint venture “intends to offer very competitive wages and benefits while making the health and safety of its work force a top priority.”Estimates shared by Ford put hourly labor costs, including benefits, for the three automakers in the mid-$60s, versus the mid-$50s for foreign automakers in the United States and the mid-$40s for Tesla.Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, said in a statement last month that the company’s offer to raise pay in the next contract was “significantly better” than what Tesla and foreign automakers paid U.S. workers. He added that Ford “will not make a deal that endangers our ability to invest, grow and share profits with our employees.”Mr. Biden and Democratic lawmakers had sought to offset this labor-cost disadvantage by providing an additional $4,500 subsidy for each electric vehicle assembled at a unionized U.S. plant, above other incentives available to electric cars. But the Senate removed that provision from the Inflation Reduction Act.Such setbacks have frustrated the U.A.W., an early backer of Mr. Biden’s clean energy plans. In May, the union, which normally supports Democratic presidential candidates, withheld its endorsement of Mr. Biden’s re-election.“The E.V. transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” Mr. Fain said in an internal memo. “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”The next month, Mr. Fain chided the Biden administration for awarding Ford a $9.2 billion loan to build three battery factories in Tennessee and Kentucky with no inducement for the jobs to be unionized.A BMW battery plant in South Carolina. The U.A.W. has struggled to unionize autoworkers in the South.Juan Diego Reyes for The New York TimesMr. Biden tapped Mr. Sperling, a Michigan native, to serve as the White House point person on issues related to the union and the auto industry around the same time. By late August, the Energy Department announced that it was making $12 billion in grants and loans available for investments in electric vehicles, with a priority on automakers that create or maintain good jobs in areas with a union presence.Mr. Sperling speaks regularly with both sides in the labor dispute, seeking to defuse misunderstandings before they escalate, and said the recent Energy Department funding reflected Mr. Biden’s commitment to jump-start the industry while creating good jobs.Complicating the picture for Mr. Biden is the growing chorus of Democratic politicians and liberal groups that have backed the autoworkers’ demands, even as they hail the president’s success in improving pay and labor standards in other green industries, like wind and solar.Nearly 30 Democratic senators signed a letter to auto executives this summer urging them to bring battery workers into the union’s national contract. Dozens of labor and environmental groups have signed a letter echoing the demand.The groups argue that the change would have only a modest impact on automakers’ profits because labor accounts for a relatively small portion of overall costs, a claim that some independent experts back.Yen Chen, principal economist of the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit group in Ann Arbor, Mich., said labor accounted for only about 5 percent of the cost of final assembly for a midsize domestic sedan based on an analysis the group ran 10 years ago. Mr. Chen said that figure was likely to be lower today, and lower still for battery assembly, which is highly automated.Beyond the economic case, however, Mr. Biden’s allies say allowing electric vehicles to drive down auto wages would be a catastrophic political mistake. Workers at the three companies are concentrated in Midwestern states that could decide the next presidential election — and, as a result, the fate of the transition to clean energy, said Jason Walsh, the executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of unions and environmental groups.“The economic effects of doing that are enormously harmful,” he said. “The political consequences would be disastrous.” More

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    Biden’s Climate Law Is Reshaping Private Investment in the United States

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    Lucrative tax incentives have fueled a surge in solar panels but failed to boost wind power, data from a new project show.Private investment in clean energy projects like solar panels, hydrogen power and electric vehicles surged after President Biden signed an expansive climate bill into law last year, a development that shows how tax incentives and federal subsidies have helped reshape some consumer and corporate spending in the United States.New data being released on Wednesday suggest the climate law and other parts of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda have helped speed the development of automotive supply chains in the American Southwest, buttressing traditional auto manufacturing centers in the industrial Midwest and the Southeast. The 2022 law, which passed with only Democratic support, aided factory investment in conservative bastions like Tennessee and the swing states of Michigan and Nevada. The law also helped underwrite a spending spree on electric cars and home solar panels in California, Arizona and Florida.The data show that in the year since the climate law passed, spending on clean-energy technologies accounted for 4 percent of the nation’s total investment in structures, equipment and durable consumer goods — more than double the share from four years ago.The law so far has failed to supercharge a key industry in the transition from fossil fuels that Mr. Biden is trying to accelerate: wind power. Domestic investment in wind production declined over the past year, despite the climate law’s hefty incentives for producers. And so far the law has not changed the trajectory of consumer spending on some energy-saving technologies like highly efficient heat pumps.But the report, which drills down to the state level, provides the first detailed look at how Mr. Biden’s industrial policies are affecting clean energy investment decisions in the private sector.The data come from the Clean Investment Monitor, a new initiative from the Rhodium Group, a consulting firm; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. Its findings go beyond simpler estimates, from the White House and elsewhere, providing the most comprehensive look yet at the effects of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda on America’s emerging clean-energy economy.The researchers spearheading the first cut of the data include Trevor Houser, a former Obama administration official, who is a partner at Rhodium; and Brian Deese, a former director of Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, who is an innovation fellow at M.I.T.The climate bill President Biden signed into law last year includes a wide range of lucrative incentives to encourage domestic manufacturing and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Inflation Reduction Act, which Mr. Biden signed into law in August 2022, includes a wide range of lucrative incentives to encourage domestic manufacturing and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels. That includes expanded tax breaks for advanced battery production, solar-panel installation, electric vehicle purchases and other initiatives. Many of those tax breaks are effectively unlimited, meaning they could eventually cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars — or even top $1 trillion — if they succeed at driving enough new investment.Biden administration officials have tried to quantify the effects of that law, along with bipartisan legislation on infrastructure and semiconductors signed by the president earlier in his term, by tallying up corporate announcements of new spending linked to the legislation. A White House website estimates that companies have so far announced $511 billion in commitments for new spending linked to those laws, including $240 billion for electric vehicles and clean energy technology.The Rhodium and M.I.T. analysis draws on data from federal agencies, trade groups, corporate announcements and securities filings, news reports and other sources to try to construct a real-time estimate of how much investment has already been made in the emissions-reducing technologies targeted by Mr. Biden’s agenda. For comparison purposes, its data stretch back to 2018, under President Donald J. Trump.The numbers show that actual — not announced — business and consumer investment in clean-energy technologies hit $213 billion in the second half of 2022 and first half of 2023, after Mr. Biden signed the climate law. That was up from $155 billion the previous year and $81 billion in the first year of the data, under Mr. Trump.Trends in the data suggest that the impact of Mr. Biden’s agenda on clean-energy investment has varied depending on the existing economics of each targeted technology.Mr. Biden’s biggest successes have come in spurring increased investment in American manufacturing, and in catalyzing investment in technologies that remain relatively new in the marketplace.Fueled partly by foreign investment, like in battery plants in Georgia, actual investment in clean-energy manufacturing more than doubled over the last year from the previous year, the data show, totaling $39 billion. Such investment was almost nonexistent in 2018.The bulk of that spending was focused on the electric-vehicle supply chain, including in the new Southwest cluster of activity across California, Nevada and Arizona. The Inflation Reduction Act includes multiple tax breaks for such investment, with domestic-content requirements meant to encourage production of critical minerals, batteries and automotive assembly in the United States.The big winners in manufacturing investment, though, as a share of states’ economies, remain traditional auto states: Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan and South Carolina.Mr. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law targets the clean-energy economy, including spending to build out more charging stations for electric vehicles.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesThe climate law also appears to have supercharged investment in so-called green hydrogen, which splits water atoms to create an industrial fuel. The same is true of carbon management — which seeks to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions from existing energy plants or pull carbon out of the atmosphere. All those technologies struggled to gain traction in the United States before the law showered them with tax breaks.Hydrogen and much of the carbon-capture investment is concentrated along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, a region filled with incumbent fossil fuel companies that have begun to branch into those technologies. Another cluster of carbon-capture investment is concentrated in Midwestern states like Illinois and Iowa, where companies that produce corn ethanol and other biofuels are beginning to spend on efforts to sequester their emissions.The incentives for those technologies in the Inflation Reduction Act, along with other support in the bipartisan infrastructure law, “fundamentally change the economics of those two technologies, making them broadly cost-competitive for the first time,” Mr. Houser said in an interview.Other incentives have not yet budged the economics of critical technologies, most notably wind power, which boomed in recent years but is now facing global setbacks as projects become increasingly expensive to finance.Wind investment was lower in the first half of this year than at any point since the database was started.In the United States, wind projects are struggling to navigate government processes for permitting, transmission and locating projects, including opposition from some state and local lawmakers. Solar projects and related investment in storage for solar power, Mr. Houser noted, can be built closer to power consumers and have fewer hurdles to clear, and investment in them grew by 50 percent in the second quarter of 2023 from a year earlier.Some consumer markets have yet to be swayed by the promise of tax breaks for new energy technologies. Americans have not increased their spending on heat pumps, even though the law covers up to $2,000 toward the purchase of a new one. And over the last year, the states with the highest spending as a share of their economy on heat pumps are all concentrated in the Southeast — where, Mr. Houser said, consumers are more likely to already own such pumps, and to be in need of a new one. More

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    Auto Strike Looms, Threatening to Shut Detroit’s Big 3

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    With their contract expiring Sept. 14, the United Auto Workers and the companies are far apart in talks. A walkout could take a big economic toll.The United Auto Workers union and the three Detroit automakers have less than two weeks to negotiate a new labor contract, and a strike of some sort seems increasingly likely.The union’s president, Shawn Fain, has primed rank-and-file members to be prepared to walk off the job if the union’s long list of demands for improved wages and benefits are not met.A strike against one of the companies, especially a prolonged stoppage, could send an economic jolt through several Midwestern states and crimp the profits of General Motors, Ford Motor or Stellantis. G.M. workers walked out for 40 days in 2019 before reaching an agreement.A strike against all three — a step the union has never taken but one Mr. Fain has said he is willing to call for this year — could have a noticeable impact on the broader U.S. economy.“If that happens, even a short strike would impact economies throughout Michigan and across the nation,” said Patrick Anderson, the chief executive of the Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing, Mich.The talks are playing out as automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to transition to electric vehicles, which require fewer workers to assemble than traditional gasoline-powered cars and trucks. The terms of the new contract will determine how both autoworkers and the companies fare in an E.V.-centric industry.At the same time, significant wage and benefit gains could provide a tailwind for a union movement that has been gaining strength across several industries.There are political stakes as well. President Biden has declared that “the U.A.W. deserves a contract that sustains the middle class” and has named a White House liaison to the union and the automakers. But the U.A.W. has withheld an endorsement of his re-election bid so far, partly because of concern over the union’s share of E.V.-related jobs created with federal subsidies.An agreement before the contracts expire on Sept. 14 is still possible, and talks could continue beyond that date without a walkout. But Mr. Fain has repeatedly said he views Sept. 14 as a deadline — the day a strike could begin. He was elected to the U.A.W. presidency last year as an insurgent, ousting the incumbent on a vow to take a more combative and confrontational approach in the talks than his recent predecessors.“President Fain has declared war, and that usually means there’s going to be a battle, and that battle would be a strike,” said Sam Fiorani, the vice president of global vehicle forecasting at Auto Forecast Solutions, a market researcher. “The U.A.W. leadership is in a position now where they have to prove to the members that they are fighting for them, so it’s pretty unlikely there won’t be a strike.”The auto industry as a whole, including foreign-owned companies with operations in the United States, makes up about 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. A 10-day strike against the three Detroit automakers would result in total wage losses of $859 million and manufacturers’ losses of $989 million, according to estimates by Mr. Anderson’s firm.In August, Mr. Fain sent each company a list of demands, including higher wages, improved benefits, a resumption of regular cost-of-living wage bumps to ward off the impact of inflation and an end to a wage structure that leaves newer hires making a third less than veteran workers. Mr. Fain suggested as much as a 40 percent wage increase, noting that the chief executives of each of the companies had their compensation packages rise substantially in the last four years.He also called for contract provisions that would require the automakers to pay workers to do community service if their plant closes, describing it as a way to deter the companies from shuttering factories and to protect towns and local economies from being ravaged by the loss of a major employer.“The manufacturers can absolutely afford some of those demands, but the more they get, the less competitive the companies are going to be,” Mr. Fiorani said.In a video message streamed on Facebook on Thursday, however, Mr. Fain said the union and the automakers remained far apart. Ford, he said, offered wage increases and other provisions that were “insulting” to the U.A.W.In a statement, Ford said it had offered a 9 percent wage increase and one-time lump-sum payments that, combined, would increase a worker’s income by 15 percent over the four-year contract. Mr. Fain said lump-sum payments helped but did not improve a worker’s income over a long period.The U.A.W. and Ford are also at odds over profit-sharing bonuses, the use of temporary workers, cost-of-living wage increases, retiree health care and several other matters.Mr. Fain said that G.M. and Stellantis had not provided counteroffers to the union’s proposals, and that the U.A.W. had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board contending that the two companies were not negotiating in good faith.An assembly line for the Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck. Automakers are spending billions in the transition to electric vehicles, which require fewer workers to make than gasoline-powered cars and trucks.Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“I know this update is infuriating, and believe me when I say I’m fed up,” he said. “Our goal is not to strike. Our goal is to bargain a fair contract, but if we have to strike to win economic and social justice, we will.”G.M. said it was “surprised by and strongly refutes” the charges in the N.L.R.B. complaint. “We have been hyper-focused on negotiating directly and in good faith with the U.A.W. and are making progress,” Gerald Johnson, G.M.’s vice president of global manufacturing, said in a statement.Stellantis was “disappointed to learn that Mr. Fain is more focused on filing frivolous legal charges than on actual bargaining,” the company said in a statement. “We will vigorously defend this charge when the time comes, but right now, we are more focused on continuing to bargain in good faith for a new agreement.”In recent weeks, workers have organized several dozen rallies and other gatherings to prepare for picketing. “I think the membership is energized,” said Christine Bostic, a battery tester at a G.M. electric vehicle plant in Detroit. “The facts are on our side. If it comes to a strike, I’m ready for that.”To soften the impact of a stoppage, the union has amassed a strike fund of $825 million. It plans to pay striking workers $500 a week and cover their health insurance premiums while they are out of work.In recent days, Mr. Fain has joined the union’s negotiating teams in their talks with each of the automakers, an unusual step. Normally, the U.A.W. president does not take a direct role until the final days or hours of negotiations.On Wednesday, he took part in discussions with Stellantis, where tensions between the two sides have been high. When Stellantis responded to Mr. Fain’s demands with a list of cost concessions it wanted from the union, Mr. Fain took to Facebook to denounce them, dropping the document into a wastebasket.Decades ago, when the U.A.W. had more than a million members and the Big Three — G.M., Ford and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis — had almost no foreign competition, a strike by the union could shut down a significant portion of the United States economy.Today, the union is much smaller. G.M., Ford and Stellantis employ about 150,000 U.A.W. workers, and those companies make only a little more than 40 percent of the cars and trucks sold in the U.S. market.But the union entered this year’s talks in a much stronger negotiating position than it had in years. In the past, the Detroit companies were struggling badly against foreign rivals that operate nonunion plants in the South, like Toyota and Honda, and had a significant cost advantage. In most of the last several contracts, G.M., Ford and Stellantis had to get concessions on wages and benefits to survive.Over the last 10 years, however, all three companies have rung up record profits, thanks in part to the concessions they won from the union as well as the shift in consumer preferences to high-margin trucks and large sport utility vehicles.In the first half of this year, Ford made $3.7 billion and G.M. made $5 billion. Stellantis reported profits of 11 billion euros (about $11.9 billion).In the past, the U.A.W. has chosen one company — it was G.M. four years ago — as the “target” to focus on in the talks. Mr. Fain has said the union could target all three companies this time around, but many analysts think the union will eventually choose Stellantis. In addition to the strains between the company and the union, their talks involve a plant in Belvidere, Ill., that Stellantis has idled and that the union wants the company to reopen.Getting Stellantis to reopen the plant is a critical task for Mr. Fain. Four years ago, G.M. closed a plant in Ohio and the U.A.W. failed in its efforts to push the company to reopen it. In his campaign for the presidency, Mr. Fain promised members that his tougher approach would prove successful this time.The union could get a hand in this battle from the federal government. On Thursday, the Energy Department said it had made $2 billion in grants and $10 billion in loans available to auto companies to convert existing factories that build gasoline-powered cars and trucks into plants that produce hybrid and electric vehicles.Stellantis, like G.M. and Ford, aims to introduce several more electric models over the next few years and will probably have to retool some plants to make them. It is already building a battery plant in Indiana for its E.V. push.Mr. Fiorani suggested that Stellantis could decide to overhaul the Belvidere plant to make electric models. “Stellantis could find a product to go in there,” he said. “For the U.A.W. to truly win something, though, it has to be electric vehicles that Stellantis would plan on making for several years.” More

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    UAW Votes to Authorize Strikes if Negotiations Fail

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    The United Auto Workers union is seeking big raises and other gains in contract talks with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.The United Auto Workers union said on Friday that 97 percent of its members had voted to authorize strikes against General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis if the union and companies were unable to negotiate new labor contracts.The result gives the union’s president, Shawn Fain, the power to tell workers to walk off the job once the current contracts expire on Sept. 14.Strike authorization votes are normally formalities that pass by significant margins and do not ensure strikes. But this vote comes as the newly energized U.A.W. takes a more assertive stance with automakers, part of a larger shift in organized labor.G.M., Ford and Stellantis have posted strong profits for about a decade. That has emboldened Mr. Fain and his members to call for substantial wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments, and improved pensions and health care benefits.“This is our time to take back what we are owed,” he said on Facebook Live on Friday. “We are united, and we are not afraid,” he added.Mr. Fain, who was narrowly elected president this year in the union’s first direct election of its top leaders, appears to have united the union’s members. He appeared at rallies with workers in Detroit on Wednesday and in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday and Friday. About a dozen similar events are planned over the next two weeks. Such events were rare in contract talks over the last 20 years.“There’s nervousness, but there’s excitement,” Luigi Gjokaj, a vice president at U.A.W. Local 51, said at the Detroit rally. “If the company comes to the table and they’re fair, we’ll have an agreement. If it has to go to a strike, we are prepared.”Mr. Fain spoke to about 100 workers at that rally from the bed of a pickup truck just outside a Stellantis plant that makes the Jeep Wagoneer, a highly profitable sport utility vehicle.“We’re not asking to be millionaires,” he said to loud cheers. “We just want our fair share.”In a statement after the result of the strike vote was announced, Ford said it hoped to work with the U.A.W. toward “creative solutions during this time when our dramatically changing industry needs a skilled and competitive work force more than ever.”This month, Mr. Fain sent the companies a list of demands, including the possibility of working only four days a week and wage increases of 40 percent, noting that the chief executives of G.M., Ford and Stellantis have been awarded bigger compensation packages over the last four years. New hires at auto plants start at about $16 an hour and over several years can work their way up to the $32 an hour earned by veteran workers.G.M., Ford and Stellantis have suggested they will probably agree to some form of higher wages. In a fresh indication of how the talks may go, an Ohio battery plant owned jointly by G.M. and LG Energy Solution, a South Korean battery maker, agreed on Thursday to increase the wages of 1,900 U.A.W. workers by 25 percent on average.Mr. Fain had repeatedly criticized wages at the plant, which had started at about $16 an hour, as being too low. The plant is covered by a separate bargaining agreement from the one the union is negotiating for workers in G.M.’s wholly owned plants. Wages there will now start at about $20 an hour.The three manufacturers aim to minimize increases in labor costs in any new contract because they are spending tens of billions of dollars on a momentous transition to electric vehicles. The companies have suggested that agreeing to all or most of Mr. Fain’s demands would leave them at a competitive disadvantage against Tesla, the dominant maker of electric cars, and European and Asian automakers that operate nonunion plants in the United States.President Biden told reporters on Friday that he was “concerned” about a potential strike by autoworkers. “I’m talking with the U.A.W.,” he said.Mr. Biden said the transition to electric vehicles should not shortchange workers. “I think that there should be a circumstance where jobs that are being displaced are replaced with new jobs,” he said, adding that the pay for those new jobs “should be commensurate.”Former President Donald J. Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, has seized on autoworkers’ unease about the switch to electric vehicles to court the U.A.W., which typically backs Democrats but has declined to endorse Mr. Biden so far.Despite the costs of investing in electrification, the three automakers are enjoying healthy profits.G.M. said in July that it expected to earn more than $9.3 billion this year, about $1 billion more than a previous forecast. Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam and owns Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and other auto brands, made 11 billion euros (about $11.9 billion) in the first half of this year, a record. Ford expects earnings before taxes of $11 billion to $12 billion this year. All three companies make most of their profits in North America.“Regardless of what other opinions might be, business profits enable future investments, which support long-term job security and opportunities for all,” said Gerald Johnson, G.M.’s executive vice president for global manufacturing and sustainability, in a video message to employees last week.The U.A.W. typically names one company that it will focus on in negotiations and make the target of a strike if it cannot reach an agreement. The union has not done so thus far, although Mr. Fain has publicly sparred the most with Stellantis.After Mr. Fain presented his demands, Stellantis responded with proposals that would increase how much workers contributed to the cost of health care, reduce the company’s contributions to retirement accounts and allow the company to close plants temporarily with little advance notice.In a Facebook video, Mr. Fain angrily denounced the Stellantis proposals and tossed a copy in a wastebasket. “That’s where it belongs, the trash, because that’s what it is,” he said.Stellantis’s chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said in a letter to employees that he was “incredibly disappointed” by Mr. Fain’s remarks. “The theatrics and personal insults will not help us reach an agreement,” Mr. Stewart said.Tensions between the U.A.W. and Stellantis, which was formed in the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot S.A., have been simmering since the automaker idled a Jeep plant in Illinois. One of Mr. Fain’s key objectives is getting the company to reopen the factory. More

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    Lawmakers Challenge Ford and Chinese Battery Partner Over Forced Labor

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    Republicans are raising fresh concerns about CATL, the battery maker Ford is working with to bring new technology to the U.S., and its connections to Xinjiang.A partnership between Ford Motor and a major Chinese battery maker is facing scrutiny by Republican lawmakers, who say it could make an American automaker reliant on a company with links to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region.In a letter sent to Ford on Thursday, the chairs of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Ways and Means Committee demanded more information about the partnership, including what they said was a plan by Ford to employ several hundred workers from China at a new battery factory in Michigan.Ford announced in February that it planned to set up the $3.5 billion factory using technology from Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., known as CATL, the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles. CATL produces about a third of electric vehicle batteries globally and supplies General Motors, Volkswagen, BMW, Tesla and other major automakers.Ford has defended the partnership, saying it will help diversify Ford’s supply chain and allow a battery that is less expensive and more durable than current alternatives to be made in the United States for the first time, rather than imported.But lawmakers, who previously criticized the partnership, cited evidence that CATL had not relinquished its ownership of a company it helped set up in Xinjiang, where the United Nations has identified systemic human rights violations.CATL publicly divested its share of the company, Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium Industry Company, in March, after its deal with Ford was announced. But the shares were bought by an investment partnership in which CATL owned a partial stake and a former CATL manager who holds leadership roles in other companies owned by the battery maker, corporate records show.The circumstances of the sale raise “serious questions about whether CATL is attempting to obscure links to forced labor,” wrote Representatives Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the chairman of the select committee, and Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The lawmakers, citing details of Ford’s licensing agreement that are on file with the select committee, also criticized the automaker’s commitment to employ several hundred Chinese workers. Employees from China would set up and maintain CATL’s equipment at the Michigan factory until about 2038, the lawmakers said. The factory is expected to employ 2,500 U.S. workers, Ford has said.“Ford has argued that the deal will create thousands of American jobs, further Ford’s ‘commitments to sustainability and human rights’ and lead to American battery technology advancements,” they wrote. “But newly discovered information raises serious questions about each claim.”T.R. Reid, a spokesman for Ford, said the company was going through the letter and would respond in good faith. He said that human rights were fundamental to how Ford did business, and that the automaker was thorough in assessing such issues.“There has been an awful lot said and implied about this project that is incorrect,” Mr. Reid said. “At the end of the day, we think creating 2,500 good-paying jobs with a new multibillion investment in the U.S. for great technology that we’ll bring to bear in great electric vehicles is good all the way around.”CATL’s collaboration with Ford could be a bellwether for the electric vehicle industry in the United States. Critics have labeled the agreement a “Trojan horse” for Chinese interests and called for scuttling the partnership. If it succeeds, they say, reliance on Chinese technology could become the norm for the U.S. electric vehicle industry.Ultimately, China’s control over key technologies like batteries could leave the United States “in a far weaker position,” said Erik Gordon, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.“The profit margins go to the innovators who provide the advanced technology, not the people with screwdrivers that assemble the advanced technology,” he said.But CATL and other Chinese companies have battery technology not readily available from suppliers in the United States or Europe. The Michigan plant would be the first in the United States to produce so-called LFP batteries that use lithium, iron and phosphate as their main active materials.They are heavier than the lithium, nickel and manganese batteries currently used by Ford and other automakers but less expensive to make and more durable, able to withstand numerous charges without degrading. They also do not use nickel or cobalt, another battery material, which are often mined in environmentally damaging ways, and sometimes with child labor.Without the most advanced or least expensive batteries, U.S. carmakers could fall behind Chinese rivals like BYD that are pushing into Europe and other markets outside China. Americans may also have to pay more for electric cars and trucks, which would slow sales of vehicles that do not emit greenhouse gases.A battery unveiled by CATL last year delivers hundreds of miles of driving range after a charge of just 10 minutes.“The hard truth is that the Chinese took a huge gamble on electric vehicles and plopped down over a trillion Chinese dollars and subsidies on this industry, and it just so happens that gamble came up all aces,” said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“If you decide not to partner with a very large battery maker, then you’re essentially committing to delaying the U.S. energy transition,” he added.Ford plans to use batteries made with CATL technology in lower-priced versions of vehicles like the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning pickup. The least expensive version of Tesla’s Model 3 sedan comes with an LFP battery that CATL is widely reported to have supplied.For decades, Western companies have had a monopoly on the world’s most advanced technologies, and have sought access to the Chinese market while also safeguarding their intellectual property.But China’s dominance in electric vehicle batteries, as well as in the production of solar panels and wind turbines, has flipped that dynamic. It has created a particularly tricky dilemma for the Biden administration and other Democrats, who want to reduce the country’s reliance on China but also argue that the United States must quickly make a transition to cleaner energy sources to try to mitigate climate change.The solar and electric vehicle battery industry’s exposure to Xinjiang further complicates the situation. The Biden administration has condemned the Chinese government for carrying out genocide and crimes against humanity in the region.The United States last year barred imports of products made in whole or in part in Xinjiang, saying companies operating in the region are not able to ensure that their facilities are free of forced labor.In 2022, CATL and a partner registered a lithium processing company in the region called Xinjiang Zhicun Lithium Industry Company, which promoted plans to become the world’s largest producer of lithium carbonate, a key battery component.Through a series of subsidiaries and shareholder relationships, that Xinjiang lithium company has financial ties to a Chinese electricity company, Tebian Electric Apparatus Stock Company, or TBEA, according to records that The New York Times reviewed through Sayari Graph, a mapping tool for corporate ownership. TBEA has participated extensively in so-called poverty alleviation and labor transfer programs in Xinjiang that the United States considers a form of forced labor.A CATL battery plant under construction in Ningde, China, in 2021. The company has said it prohibits any form of forced labor in its supply chain.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesWhile the Chinese government argues that labor transfer and poverty alleviation programs are aimed at improving living standards in the region, human rights experts say that they are also directed at pacifying and indoctrinating the population, and that Uyghurs and other minority groups there cannot say no to these programs without fear of detention or punishment.CATL did not respond to a request for comment. In December, it told The Times that it was a minority shareholder in the Xinjiang company and strictly prohibited any form of forced labor in its supply chain.The Republican lawmakers also raised concerns about whether batteries made at Ford’s Michigan plant would qualify for tax credits that the Biden administration was offering consumers who bought electric vehicles as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.The law prohibits “foreign entities of concern” — like companies in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea — from benefiting from government tax credits. But because Ford is licensing CATL technology for the plant — rather than forming a joint venture, as has often been the case with automakers and battery suppliers — the batteries made in Michigan may still qualify for those incentives.The Biden administration has not yet clarified exactly how the restriction on foreign entities will be applied. But Ford officials said they had been in conversation with the administration about the Michigan plant, and were confident that the partnership would qualify for all of the law’s benefits.“We think batteries built by American workers in an American plant run by the wholly owned subsidiary of an American company will and should qualify,” Mr. Reid, the Ford spokesman, said. More

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    G.M.’s Sales Jumped 19% in the Second Quarter

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    General Motors, Toyota and other automakers sold more trucks and sport utility vehicles as supply chain problems eased and demand remained strong despite rising interest rates.Some of the country’s biggest automakers reported big sales increases for the second quarter on Wednesday, the strongest sign yet that the auto industry was bouncing back from parts shortages and overcoming the effects of higher interest rates.General Motors, the largest U.S. automaker, said it sold 691,978 vehicles from April to June, up 19 percent from a year earlier. It was the company’s highest quarterly total in more than two years.Automakers have struggled in the last two years with a shortage of computer chips that forced factory shutdowns and left dealers with few vehicles to sell. More recently, rising interest rates have made auto loans more expensive, causing some consumers to defer purchases or opt for used vehicles.“I’m not saying we are on the cusp of exciting growth here,” said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, a research firm. “But we are now at a turning point where the auto market returns to more balance. It’s the beginning of returning to normal.”The easing of chip shortages has allowed automakers to restock dealer lots, making it easier for car buyers to find the models and features they want, Mr. Smoke said. At the end of June, dealers had about 1.8 million vehicles in stock, nearly 800,000 more than at the same point in 2022, according to Cox data.Sales have also been helped by strong job creation and rising wages, Mr. Smoke said.At the same time, however, higher interest rates and higher car prices have put new-car purchases out of reach of many consumers. In the first half of the year, the average price paid for a new vehicle was a near-record $48,564. The average interest rate paid on car loans in the first six months of 2023 was 7.09 percent, up from 4.86 percent a year earlier, according to Cox. The average monthly payment in the first half was $784, up from $691.“Demand will be limited by the level of prices and rates, which are not likely to come down enough to stimulate more demand than the market can bear,” Mr. Smoke said.Cox estimated that total sales of new cars and trucks rose 11.6 percent in the first half of the year, to 7.65 million. The firm now expects full-year sales to top 15 million, which would be a rise of 8 percent.Several automakers reported solid quarterly sales on Wednesday. Toyota said its U.S. sales rose 7 percent, to 568,962 cars and light trucks. Stellantis, the company that owns Jeep, Ram, Chrysler and other brands, reported a 6 percent rise, to 434,648 vehicles.Honda, which had been severely hampered by chip shortages, said its sales rose 45 percent to 347,025 cars and trucks. Hyundai and Kia, the South Korean automakers, each sold more than 210,000 vehicles, posting gains of 14 percent and 15 percent.Electric vehicles remain the fastest-growing segment of the auto industry. Rivian, a maker of electric pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, said on Monday that it delivered 12,640 in the second quarter, a 59 percent jump from a year earlier. And on Sunday, Tesla reported an 83 percent jump in global sales in the second quarter.Cox estimated that more than 500,000 electric vehicles were sold in the United States in the first six months of the year, and that more than one million would be sold in 2023, setting a record for battery-powered cars and trucks in the country.Tesla, which does not break out its sales by country, remains the largest seller of E.V.s in the U.S. market. Cox estimated that the company sold more than 161,000 electric cars in the second quarter in the United States. Ford Motor, which offers three fully electric models., reports its quarterly sales on Thursday.G.M. sold more 15,300 battery-powered cars and trucks, but nearly 14,000 were the Chevrolet Bolt, a smaller vehicle that the company will stop making at the end of the year. The company also sold 1,348 Cadillac Lyriq electric S.U.V.s and 47 GMC Hummer pickup trucks. Chevrolet will soon start delivering a new electric Silverado pickup truck, which uses the same battery technology as the Lyriq and Hummer. More

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    Rural Georgia Factory, Flush With Federal Funds, Votes to Unionize

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    Friday’s victory by the United Steelworkers at a factory building electric school buses was a test for Democratic hopes that clean-energy funding from Washington could bolster organized labor.Workers at a rural Georgia factory that builds electric school buses under generous federal subsidies voted to unionize on Friday, handing organized labor and Democrats a surprise victory in their hopes to turn huge new infusions of money from Washington into a union beachhead in the Deep South.The company, Blue Bird in Fort Valley, Ga., may lack the cachet of Amazon or the ubiquity of Starbucks, two other corporations that have attracted union attention. But the 697-to-435 vote by Blue Bird’s workers to join the United Steelworkers was the first significant organizing election at a factory receiving major federal funding under legislation signed by President Biden.“This is just a bellwether for the future, particularly in the South, where working people have been ignored,” Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Friday evening after the vote. “We are now in a place where we have the investments coming in and a strategy for lifting up wages and protections for a good high-road future.”The three bills making up that investment include a $1 trillion infrastructure package, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $370 billion for clean energy to combat climate change.Each of the bills included language to help unions expand their membership, and Blue Bird’s management, which opposed the union drive, had to contend with the Democrats’ subtle assistance to the Steelworkers.Banners appeared outside the Blue Bird plant in the period leading up to the union vote.Jonathan Weisman/The New York TimesBlue Bird stands to benefit from the new federal funds. Last year, it hailed the $500 million that the Biden administration was providing through the infrastructure bill for the replacement of diesel-powered school buses with zero- and low-emission buses. Georgia school systems alone will get $51.1 million to buy new electric buses, but Blue Bird sells its buses across the country. Still more money will come through the Inflation Reduction Act, another law praised by the company.But that money came with strings attached — strings that subtly tilted the playing field toward the union. Just two weeks ago, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the Clean School Bus Program, pushed a demand on all recipients of federal subsidies to detail the health insurance, paid leave, retirement and other benefits they were offering their workers.They also required the companies to have “committed to remain neutral in any organizing campaign and/or to voluntarily recognize a union based on a show of majority support.” And under the rules of the infrastructure bill, no federal money may to be used to thwart a union election.The Steelworkers union used the rules to its advantage. In late April, it filed multiple unfair labor practice charges against Blue Bird’s management, citing $40 million in rebates the company had received from the E.P.A., which stipulated that those funds could not be used for anti-union activity.“The rules say if workers want a union, you can’t use any money to hire anti-union law firms, or use people to scare workers,” Daniel Flippo, director of the Steelworkers district that covers the Southeast, said before the vote. “I’m convinced Blue Bird has done that.”Politicians also got involved. Georgia’s two Democratic senators and southwestern Georgia’s Democratic House member also subtly nudged the plant’s management, in a union-hostile but politically pivotal state, to at least keep the election fair.“I have been a longtime supporter of the USW and its efforts to improve labor conditions and living standards for workers in Georgia,” the Democratic congressman, Representative Sanford Bishop, wrote of the United Steelworkers in an open letter to Blue Bird workers. “I want to encourage you in your effort to exercise your rights granted by the National Labor Relations Act.”Blue Bird’s management minimized such pressure in its public statements, even as it fought hard to beat back union organizers.“Although we respect and support the right for employees to choose, we do not believe that Blue Bird is better served by injecting a labor union into our relationship with employees,” said Julianne Barclay, a spokeswoman for the company. “During the pending election campaign, we have voiced our opinion to our employees that a union is not in the best interest of the company or our employees.”Friday’s union victory has the labor movement thinking big as the federal money continues to flow, and that could be good for Mr. Biden and other Democrats, especially in the pivotal state of Georgia.“Workers at places like Blue Bird, in many ways, embody the future,” Mr. Flippo said after the vote, adding, “For too long, corporations cynically viewed the South as a place where they could suppress wages and working conditions because they believed they could keep workers from unionizing.”The Blue Bird union shop, 1,400 workers strong, will be one of the biggest in the South, and union leaders said it could be a beachhead as they eyed new electric vehicle suppliers moving in — and potentially the biggest, most difficult targets: foreign electric vehicle makers like Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, which have located in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina in part to avoid unions.“Companies move there for a reason — they want as smooth a path toward crushing unions as possible,” said Steve Smith, a national spokesman for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “But we have federal money rolling in, a friendly administration and a chance to make inroads like we have never had before.”The Blue Bird plant, which rises suddenly off a rural highway lined with peach and pecan orchards, has long made it a practice to hire less educated workers, some of whom have prison records and most of whom start at $16 or $17 an hour, said Alex Perkins, a main organizer for the United Steelworkers in Georgia.A union was a tough sell for such vulnerable workers against a management that was fiercely opposed, organizers conceded. Coming off the last shift of the day on Thursday, most workers declined to speak on the record. A clutch of about a dozen workers stood on Friday at the Circle K gas station across the street from the plant in the predawn darkness, holding pro-union signs as the first workers arrived to cast ballots under the gaze of National Labor Relations Board monitors.But Cynthia Harden, who has worked at the plant for five years and voted in favor of organizing, did talk about the pressure workers were under to vote against it. Slide shows on the voting process, which showed ballots marked “no,” said that the company could go broke if the union won, and there was a sudden appearance of food trucks at lunch and banners on the perimeter fence reading, “We Love Our Employees!”“They’ve made some changes already, but if the union hadn’t started, nothing would have happened,” she said.The letter that Georgia’s Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, wrote to Matt Stevenson, Blue Bird’s chief executive and president, was remarkably timid, praising the company for its cooperation and its well-paying jobs before “encouraging all involved, whatever their desired outcome, to make sure that the letter and the spirit of the National Labor Relations Act are followed.”Mr. Perkins fumed at that tone, considering the work that unions had put in to help Mr. Warnock win re-election last year. “I won’t forget it next time,” he said.Both senators declined requests to comment on the election. More

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    In Ohio, Electric Cars Are Starting to Reshape Jobs and Companies

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    Erick Belmer has seen how tough the car business can be. He was working at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, when it shut down in 2019, devastating the community.Mr. Belmer, an industrial mechanic, got another job at a G.M. transmission factory in Toledo, but his commute is now 140 miles each way. His schedule gives him just a few hours with his family and a few hours of sleep.Yet far from being bitter, Mr. Belmer says he is excited. G.M. is converting his factory to produce electric motors, part of an industrial transformation that will redefine manufacturing regions and jobs around the world.G.M., Ford Motor and other carmakers announced investments of more than $50 billion in new factories in the United States last year, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. All but a small fraction of that money was to build and retool plants for electric vehicles and batteries.Mr. Belmer is one of thousands of people who will also have to pick up new skills. “It’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve,” he said at the Toledo factory. “But our guys are well equipped to handle this.”Mr. Belmer and Ohio are bellwethers of how the transition to electric vehicles will play out. G.M., Jeep, Honda Motor and parts makers employ many thousands of people across this state.Gas transmissions at G.M.’s plant in Toledo. G.M. has committed to retraining the workers there to make electric motors, and to investing $760 million to convert the plant’s assembly lines.Ohio’s experience may signal how the transition to electric vehicles will play out for workers.An electric drive unit on display at the G.M. plant.Ohio produces more internal combustion engines than any other state, making an adjustment to electric cars particularly urgent. Nearly 90,000 people work in Ohio for carmakers or parts suppliers, and several times that many are employed by businesses that serve those autoworkers and their families.The changes are putting Ohio at the forefront of a new technology that is critical to fighting climate change. But some jobs will become obsolete, and some companies will go bankrupt. It’s an open question whether the winners will outnumber the losers.“This is the largest transition in our industry since its inception,” said Tony Totty, the president of a United Auto Workers local that represents G.M. workers in Toledo.Mr. Totty is optimistic about the members of his local. But he is worried about other colleagues whose jobs are tied to gasoline engines, he said.There is “an expiration date on those facilities and those communities,” Mr. Totty said.Warren, in eastern Ohio, knows what happens when a carmaker leaves town. The city lost one-third of its population, about 20,000 people, after G.M. closed the factory in nearby Lordstown, which produced Chevrolet Cruze sedans, in 2019. Sales of that car had been fading as more Americans chose sport utility vehicles.Even before that shutdown, auto production jobs had been declining. U.S. automakers and their parts suppliers employed about one million people at the end of 2018, down from more than 1.3 million in 2000. In the years before G.M. closed the Lordstown plant, it had reduced shifts and pared its work force.“Our biggest export for the last 20 years has been talented young people,” said Rick Stockburger, the president of Brite Energy Innovators, an organization in Warren that offers work space, advice and funding to start-ups.Today, things are looking somewhat better. Ultium Cells, a joint venture of G.M. and LG Energy Solution, is ramping up production of batteries near the defunct factory.Tony Totty, the president of the United Auto Workers local that represents G.M.’s workers in Toledo, said the current moment represented “the largest transition in our industry since its inception.”Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturer, has taken over the old G.M. plant and plans to produce electric vehicles and tractors there. The complex will also house an “electric vehicle academy” established by Foxconn and Youngstown State University to train workers.That surge in investment is helping to revive Warren’s tidy but sleepy downtown. Doug Franklin, the mayor, who worked for G.M. in Lordstown, said he was pleased recently to step into a local restaurant where “nobody knew me, because we had so many new people.”Mr. Franklin represents the optimistic view — that an industrial renaissance is underway. The pandemic and the supply chain chaos that it caused have made companies leery of components produced far away. That experience, plus billions in federal subsidies approved by Democrats last year, motivated manufacturers to build vehicles, batteries and other components in the United States.“We’re seeing a new level of hope that I haven’t seen in decades,” Mr. Franklin said.But community leaders in Warren are also aware that the transition comes with risks.Hopes that the old plant will become a buzzing electric vehicle factory have not panned out, so far. G.M. sold the factory to Lordstown Motors, a fledgling electric pickup truck company that ran into trouble and resold the plant to Foxconn.Executives at Foxconn, which has long assembled electronic devices but has little experience making cars, declined interview requests. It’s not clear when the company will mass-produce electric vehicles in Lordstown, if ever.The Rev. Todd Johnson, the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Warren and a member of the City Council, worries that his mostly African American parishioners won’t benefit from the new jobs.Mr. Johnson, whose parents worked for G.M., encourages young people to study subjects like robotics and coding, and has led after-church trips to a science and technology center in nearby Youngstown.“There are going to be opportunities coming,” he said, “and I desperately don’t want to see the next generation of our children miss out.”One pressing question is what will happen to people whose skills are no longer needed.Eric Gonzales, the executive director of G.M.’s Toledo factory, says the plant will need at least as many workers as it has today, as it replaces its gasoline models with electric ones.G.M. is dealing with that issue at the Toledo factory, Toledo Propulsion Systems, which makes transmissions that electric cars won’t need. The automaker has committed to retraining the Toledo workers to make electric motors, and to investing $760 million to convert assembly lines at the plant.If anything, G.M. will need more workers, said Eric Gonzales, the executive director of the factory, as it replaces gasoline models with electric cars. “We’re taking the employees with us.”The G.M. factory in Toledo will show whether established automakers can compete with Tesla, the fast-growing automaker that can focus all of its resources on electric vehicles because that’s all it makes. Established carmakers need to keep earning money from internal combustion vehicles while ramping up a new technology that is not yet profitable.G.M. has an advantage, Mr. Gonzales said, because it has factories equipped with sprinkler systems, high-voltage power and other essentials. “We already have the four walls here with the infrastructure,” he said, speaking above the din of clanking machinery. “Somebody new, they have very expensive capital costs.”Other auto executives prefer to start fresh. Volkswagen’s new Scout Motors unit looked at sites in Ohio and other states to produce electric pickup trucks and S.U.V.s, but chose to build a $2 billion factory in South Carolina.It’s cheaper and easier to build from scratch, said Scott Keogh, the chief executive of Scout. “You’re not juggling this classic dynamic of a legacy internal combustion engine plant where you need to inject a new electric vehicle,” he said.Workers placing batteries in hybrid vehicles at the Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio.Ohio is in intense competition with other states to attract investment. But Midwestern states, including Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, have been less successful than states in the South where Republican political leaders have courted investment aggressively — even as they denounce the Democratic policies that helped create the boom.Since 2020, automakers have announced investments of $51 billion in electric vehicle and battery production in the South, compared with $31 billion in states in the Great Lakes region, according to the Center for Automotive Research.Southern states tend to have lower labor costs, in part because most auto plants there are not unionized. This could pose a problem for the United Auto Workers and President Biden, who want the switch to electric vehicles to create more high-paying union jobs. It could well be that most of the new electric car and battery jobs will end up in the South, where unions face political opposition, and not in the Midwest, where unions have political clout — and where most of the jobs lost in combustion engine vehicles once were.Ohio has some things going for it. In March, Honda Motor said it would convert one of two assembly lines at its decades-old plant in Marysville, near Columbus, to build electric vehicles. Honda, a Japanese company, is also building a battery factory about an hour away, in Jeffersonville, with LG Energy Solution.In Ohio, Honda employs more than 14,000 people making cars and motors, and the company’s plans will show whether electric vehicles, which require fewer parts than gasoline cars, will create or destroy jobs.Honda’s assembly line of electric-car batteries at its Marysville plant.For the next several years, the transition will probably create jobs as carmakers make both gasoline and electric vehicles. Bob Nelson, the executive vice president of American Honda Motor, noted that, at the moment, there was a shortage of skilled labor. “We’re going to need everybody,” he said in Marysville, where Honda makes Accord sedans.What happens later is less certain. “When you don’t have the complexity that we’re used to, with engines and transmissions and mufflers and radiators and exhaust systems and all those components that aren’t going to be there anymore,” said Bruce Baumhower, the president of a United Auto Workers local that represents employees of auto suppliers in Ohio, “it makes me wonder what’s left.”Dana Incorporated, based in Maumee, near Toledo, is also grappling with that question. Dana’s employees — more than 40,000 of them — make axles, drive shafts and other parts. Electric vehicles need axles but typically do not need long drive shafts because the motors can be placed close to the wheels.James Kamsickas, Dana’s chief executive, has spent time in China and has been struck by the proliferation of electric vehicles there. Recognizing the threat to some of Dana’s products, Mr. Kamsickas acquired several firms with expertise in electric motors and other technology.James Kamsickas, right, Dana’s chief executive, has acquired several firms with expertise in electric motors and other technology.Dana now offers axles with electric motors built in, saving weight and energy, and it has deployed its expertise in gaskets to make equipment for cooling electric-car batteries that G.M. plans to use. Most of Dana’s orders are for products related to electric vehicles.Ohio’s economic future hinges on whether other companies make similar leaps. “You don’t have a choice,” Mr. Kamsickas said. “Sooner or later, you’d be a melting iceberg.” More