Auto workers are on strike nationally, hoping to wrest more pay for the work they do. These workers might want to focus on the pay they’re going to lose when their work disappears, courtesy of “electrification” — the making of electric vehicles that will require fewer workers and lead to fewer buyers.
They might also want to consider asking questions about the underlying impetus for “electrification” — the rush to stop making things generally — which will result in less work (and no pay) since the making of things, not just cars, results in the “emission” of “carbon.” The latter is the latest variant in the ongoing mass psychosis event marketed as a “climate crisis.” (READ MORE: The Latest Union Strike Might Turn Workers Red)
Carbon has a dirtier mouth feel than carbon dioxide, you see.
The illiterate hear it, and the desired association is made; it lays the necessary psychological groundwork for getting them to accept their own enserfment — for the sake of getting “clean.”
The Big Three automakers are losing billions in pursuit of the “electrification” chimera, but the old grifter behind the teleprompter says they ought to “share” their “record profits” with the workers. The etymology of coercion is fascinating. When a government official says “share,” he means hand over.
Which he will inevitably “ask” the victim to do.
Car Manufacturers Losing Billions on EVs
Anyhow, the fact is the Big Three — GM, Ford, and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram trucks) — are not earning “record profits.”
They are hemorrhaging record losses, having bought into “electrification.”
In the case of Ford, these are reported to be in the neighborhood of $60,000 down the drain per F-150 Lightning pick-up sold — plus similar bleeding on each sale of other “electrified” models, such as the “Mustang” Mach-E, which is a crossover SUV with Mustang-looking tail lights. Few people are buying the tail lights. They’d rather have the Mustang — which goes twice as far and costs about $10k less.
Ford CEO Jim Farley recently corrected his previous estimate of the losses incurred by “electrification” from $3 billion to $4.5 billion.
On the other hand, the record compensation received by CEOs who have embraced “electrification” — such as GM’s Mary Barra, who is paid just shy of $30 million for one year’s work — probably does chafe the UAW line worker making $50k for a year’s work. (READ MORE: The Fight for the Bouquinistes: Killing a Medieval Profession)
When the latter is out of work, he — unlike Barra — won’t have tens of millions to fall back on. The prospect of being out of work increases as “electrification” waxes because there isn’t going to be much work left to do. An electric vehicle is simpler to assemble than a vehicle with an engine, transmission, and related peripherals. It is basically an extruded plastic shell draped over a “skate” that holds the battery and motor.
Fewer workers are needed to put the two together.
But fewer people are buying these extruded plastic shells over skates because fewer people want them — now that more people know the truth about them.
And because fewer can afford them.
The average price paid for a new vehicle, not just the electric ones, is already just shy of $50,000. This is roughly a $10,000 increase in the average price paid for a new vehicle since before the “pandemic,” which “stimulated” the economy with a tsunami of government-bankster-created money, thereby increasing the price we pay for everything by devaluing the buying power of the money we are forced to use to pay for things.
Autoworkers are feeling the pinch, just like everyone else (except the people responsible for all of this, of course; they have plenty of our money to compensate themselves for the costs they impose on the rest of us). Naturally, they want more money to compensate for the diminished buying power of their money and the higher cost of everything they need to buy, such as food, rent, and electricity.
UAW Demands Will Drive Up the Price of Everything
But if the UAW gets what it seeks — a general wage increase of almost 40 percent over the next four years — what do you suppose the effect will be upon the price of vehicles and not just the “electrified” ones?
The UAW’s leader, Shawn Fain, insists that paying auto workers just shy of 40 percent more for the work they do won’t result in the work they do costing their employer more, thus causing what they make cost more to sell — and thereby resulting in fewer sales. And he is demanding it at just the moment when buyers are having trouble affording necessities, let alone financing a $50k car using a six-year loan at 8 percent interest.
It is almost as logical as wearing a second “mask” to “stop the spread.”
And it is beside the point.
The autoworkers are focused on the wrong problem. They do not seem to see the existential threat to their economic existence posed by “electrification.” They do not seem to understand that the impetus motivating it — this dirty business of characterizing a gas that does not cause pollution as an “emission” and thereby accepting the absurd and false necessity of having to “clean” up those “emissions” — is meant to get them to accept the necessity of greatly diminishing if not ending entirely the work they do. (READ MORE: DeSantis Calls for American Energy Dominance)
There will not be a one-for-one transition from making vehicles with engines to making battery-powered devices any more than there will be a one-for-one transition from cars with engines to battery-powered devices. There will be fewer cars and by dint of that, fewer jobs needed to make them. Then, there will be no negotiating over pay as workers who are out of work and no longer needed don’t get paid.
If the auto workers understood this, they would not be demanding a close-to-40 percent pay raise. They would be asking pointed questions about this dirty business of forced “electrification” — and denying the lies about “climate change” that will put them and most of the rest of us into the poorhouse if these lies continue to be accepted as true.