The ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers against the Big Three automakers is a perfect illustration of the relationship between organized labor and the progressive movement.

They’re the same thing.

It might seem as though there’s some daylight between the two. There should be some daylight between the two. The Biden administration’s electric-vehicle mandates, supported by climate activists, are forcing the automotive industry to re-center its business on EVs. So far, they aren’t very popular and require significant subsidies to encourage consumer demand.

Automakers, under government orders, are focusing on a market segment that doesn’t make a lot of business sense. That’s going to be bad for their employees. It would be bad even if it weren’t also true that the market segment the government is forcing them to focus on requires less labor, which EVs do compared to ordinary cars.

You may have seen the media attempt to play up the apparent conflict, with headlines about the difficulties of keeping organized labor and environmentalist groups on the same page, or the coalitional challenges facing Democrats. But the organizations do not see a conflict here, even though there clearly is one, and they remain as committed as ever to the progressive policy goals they have long supported.

The UAW has spoken out against a handful of specific actions by the Biden administration. For example, it spoke out against a green subsidy given to Ford for battery production because the loan didn’t specify wages to the UAW’s liking. It claims to be withholding its endorsement of Biden for reelection.

But this is a union that has given 98 percent of its campaign contributions to Democrats in each and every election cycle since 1990, as NR noted in its editorial today. It’s not a secret that Democrats support using government power to force the “energy transition” on the American economy. It’s not a secret that Biden in particular wanted that; he campaigned on it extensively. And it’s not a secret that overhauling the car industry was a major part of that policy program, with the push for EVs putting many UAW jobs at risk. The UAW knew what it was getting.

The thing is, the UAW doesn’t care. It fully supports the EV transition. “The UAW looks forward to continue working with the Biden Administration to ensure a just transition for the auto workers in this country,” the union said in an August 31 statement. It’s not changing its mind on that.

And no matter how much Donald Trump tries to pander, there’s precisely zero chance the UAW will endorse Trump instead. Trump’s administration generally adhered to the conventional conservative approach to organized labor — opposing it — and the UAW hasn’t forgotten that. UAW president Shawn Fain has already spoken out strongly against Trump’s urging autoworkers to stop paying dues.

Environmentalist groups continue to see the UAW as an ally. Politico reported:

“We firmly support the UAW members’ demands and believe that the success of these negotiations is of critical importance for the rights and well-being of workers and to safeguard people and the environment,” a group of 100 labor, racial justice and environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council said in an open letter to the heads of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. “Only through meeting these demands will the United States ensure a just transition to a renewable energy future.”

Meeting these demands would result in the EV transition’s becoming much more expensive. The UAW wants 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of weekly work, a 46 percent raise, and defined-benefit pensions. That would make it much harder to efficiently produce the EVs that are needed immediately to stave off the climate crisis that the environmentalists claim to be concerned about.

All of this might seem contradictory if you understand the UAW to be an organization representing the interests of auto workers and environmentalist groups to be organizations looking out for a clean planet. But it makes perfect sense if you understand that they are all just progressive interest groups. Organized labor supports the climate agenda, and climate activists support the labor agenda, because they are all part of the progressive agenda. That’s still true even when it makes no logical sense.