Defined-benefit pensions? Aren’t generous pensions a thing of the past? Not for Big Three executives, Fain said. (See my May TNR article on special “top hat plans”—that’s actually what they’re called—available exclusively to corporate big shots.) Fain reminded me that in 1949 former UAW president Walter Reuther (“the most underappreciated American in American history”) secured defined-benefit pensions for retired auto workers with the slogan “too old to work, too young to die.” That hasn’t changed.
I asked Fain about reports that the UAW is withholding its expected endorsement of President Joe Biden, with whom Fain met in July. “It was a good meeting,” Fain said, but “we’ve made it clear that our endorsements are going to be earned, not freely given.” The Biden administration, which issued a report earlier this week touting the benefits of union representation (“Labor Unions and the Middle Class”), dodged a bullet during the past year averting threatened strikes by rail unions, west coast port workers, and United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers. It could use an autoworkers’ strike like a hole in the head.
The Inflation Reduction Act introduced tax credits that prompted, by the end of 2022, a $73 billion investment in United States plants to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles. The Big Three are forming partnerships with other companies to build batteries, and they’ve signaled they’re willing to hire union labor. But Fain says that’s not enough. “The battery work, specifically, that’s the future power train of the automobile,” he said. That power train right now is built by workers covered by the UAW contract. Its replacement, he said, should be built by workers covered by the same contract. “We stand to lose 20 percent of our workers” to battery production, Fain said. “It has to be a just transition.”