NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {W} hile the radical bosses of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union are seemingly nonchalant about the possibility that the strike they launched on September 15 against GM, Stellantis, and Ford — formerly known as the “Big Three” automakers — could drag on for months, many autoworkers who face the prospect of getting by for an extended period without a paycheck likely have a very different perspective.

American consumers who have already had to deal with a 40 percent increase in the price of a used car and an $8,000 hike in the price of a new car since Joe Biden became president also have ample reason to be less than excited about a potential long war by vituperative UAW president Shawn Fain and his lieutenants against Big Three executives.

But Biden sees an opportunity. Even before this nationwide strike began, he and his 2024 reelection team had begun taking advantage of the rising tension between Big Labor officials and management in the shrinking unionized segment of the U.S. auto industry to cement enthusiastic reelection support from UAW kingpins.

In a blatantly political and legally questionable move in August, the Biden Energy Department announced that, regarding its $12 billion in grants and loans for companies transitioning to electric-vehicle (EV) manufacturing, it would “prioritize” those that corral their employees into unions. On September 26, CNN reported that this handout emerged shortly after a “personal audience” between Fain and Biden.

CNN’s Kayla Tausche went on to quote an unnamed UAW source who confirmed that the $12 billion payoff would, in the reporter’s words, “go a long way in helping to secure the union’s endorsement of Biden.” A second anonymous UAW source was directly quoted regarding the payoff: “This isn’t enough to get an endorsement, but it gets us a significant part of the way there.”

Forking over enough taxpayer billions to slow down, if not halt, the long-term slide in the share of U.S. autoworkers whom UAW represents, and thereby satisfy Fain, would be a very expensive proposition. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of all job creation, along with the vast majority of job creation in U.S. car and truck assembly — and parts factories specifically — is occurring in right-to-work states, where Big Labor wields less coercive power over employees.

Indeed, according to the most recent available U.S. Labor Department Household Survey data, the 23 states that still lack right-to-work protections for private-sector employees have yet to recover, in the aggregate, all the jobs they lost in the first two months of the Covid-19 pandemic, well over three years ago.

As of this August, the total employment for forced-dues states was 79.6 million, roughly 400,000 below what it was in February 2020.

The picture is very different in the 27 right-to-work states, where, the latest data show, 81.45 million people are employed — 3.11 million more than in February 2020.

Until now, Big Labor–dominated states have been faring poorly in attracting jobs even in the “clean energy” sector, which the Biden administration and its congressional allies are trying so hard to promote by vast sums of money extracted from taxpayers under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act signed by the president last year.

According to an analysis published by Reuters, among the “more than 50 EV battery, solar panel and other factories,” whose construction was announced during the first six months after the IRA became law in August 2022, “83 percent are located in . . . right to work states, which bar companies from requiring workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.”

So far, the IRA’s massive incentives for business owners who acquiesce to unions’ corralling their employees haven’t sufficed to steer job-creating investments toward forced-dues states. But the Biden administration is poised to keep upping the ante until they do.

Using the U.S. Treasury to bribe manufacturers into locating their facilities in jurisdictions where they couldn’t operate profitably without federal largesse makes no sense economically. But it apparently makes perfect political sense to Joe Biden as he faces what could be a tough battle for reelection next year.