As part of his “Build Back Better” agenda, President Joe Biden signed an executive order last week intended to boost auto manufacturing in the U.S. The order plans to inject $3 billion into the U.S. auto industry to ensure that one-in-two new cars sold in 2030 are zero-emission vehicles, and to “grow good-paying, union jobs at home.”
In reality, this order is a gift to union leaders at a time when more and more workers are turning away from union representation.
Executives from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis N.V., as well as the president of United Auto Workers, Ray Curry, were invited to the White House as Biden announced the new executive order.
Ironically, Tesla—who’s Model 3 is the top selling electric vehicle in the world—was not invited to the event. Tesla has production facilities in California, Nevada, New York, and Texas, and seems like the perfect company to attend. Coincidentally, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis N.V. have unionized workers, while Tesla does not.
This should be the first hint to let you know that this executive order is about supporting unions under the guise of improving “fuel efficiency and emissions standards.”
Biden’s push to expand union membership among auto workers is expensive.
U.S. automakers have been battling higher domestic labor costs from unionization for decades.
Although unionization has historically resulted in higher wages for auto workers, firms are faced with higher production costs, which are eventually passed down to consumers.
In 2020, the Center for Automotive Research estimated that automakers’ expenses will rise from $800 million to $1 billion by 2023. More specifically, hourly labor costs for unionized workers are expected to increase up to $66 to $71 for Fiat Chrysler, GM, and Ford.
Meanwhile, unionization is becoming increasingly unpopular among workers in the auto industry.
Michigan, traditionally the auto manufacturing hub of America, has in fact experienced a decline in unionization since the 1980s. Union membership rates continued to fall after 2013 when the state’s freedom-to-work laws came into effect.
From 2012 to 2020, total union membership rates fell in Michigan by more than 2 percentage points, with a more substantial decline among government workers.
Workers at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted against union representation in 2019, and Nissan workers also declined to unionize in Canton, Mississippi in 2017.
Just last year, the union membership rate among all U.S. wage and salary workers was 10.8%–a 9.3 percentage point drop since 1983 (but a 0.5 percentage point increase since 2019).
Americans are evidently not as receptive to unionization as they once were. Unions have outlived their usefulness in the current U.S. economy and are no longer needed to the extent they were decades ago.
Biden’s claim that “we need to grow good-paying, union jobs at home” is disconnected from the reality of the U.S. labor market. Better paying jobs can come from technology, higher productivity, and specialization. More unionization will only increase production costs, making consumers pay the price.
Image by www_slon_pics from Pixabay. Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.
The Dangers of Speaking the Truth Diminish If We Work Together
It’s becoming harder and harder for patriots to ignore the deep suppression of truth that’s happening in America today.
In all of my years in journalism, I have never received as many threats or been attacked by big companies like Google and Facebook as I have in 2021. I’d say that ever since we started covering widespread voter fraud, government-endorsed Pandemic Panic Theater, vaccine cover-ups, Critical Race Theory, and the various Neo-Marxist and Satanic agendas at play, I’ve been targeted more in months than the entirety of my life prior.
Speaking the truth is getting harder with so much censorship and suppression rampant. Prior to 2020, I was not a “conspiracy theorist” or an “anti-vaxxer,” but if there’s one thing the onslaught of exposed lies have taught us in the last 18 months, it’s that we cannot take what we’re told by the “arbiters of truth” at face value. There’s an agenda behind every message, a narrative driving every story, and a series of gigantic cover-ups designed to keep the masses in the dark.
This is why we’re building a network of news outlets that are willing to go against the narrative and expose the truth. We need help. We’re establishing strong partnerships with like-minded news outlets and courageous journalists. Even as Big Tech suppresses us, the honest messages they’re trying to quash are finding their way to the eyes and ears of patriots across the nation. With the help of new content partners like The Epoch Times and The Liberty Daily, we’re starting to see a real impact.
Our network is currently comprised of nine sites:
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I’ve said much of this before. From time to time I reframe this request for assistance by taking the most relevant message of the day and adjusting the story accordingly. We’ve discussed this network in previous articles. Now, it’s time to talk about help. First and foremost, we need financial assistance detailed below. But we could also use more writers who are willing to volunteer their thoughts for the sake of spreading the message. Those who are interested should contact me directly.
As far as money, we’re looking better than we have in the recent past, but we are currently experiencing a gap between revenue and expenses that cannot be overcome by click-ads and MyPillow promos alone (promo code “NOQ” by the way).
To overcome our revenue gap and keep these sites running, our needs fluctuate between $2200-$7800 per month. May, 2021, for example, was amazing and we almost broke even. June, revenue was sluggish at best and we had to make up a big difference out of our pockets. But we’re not just trying to get out of the red. If and when we start getting enough contributions to expand, we will do just that. Very few get into journalism to try to get rich and we’re definitely not among those who do. Our success is driven by spreading the truth, profitable or not.
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