I wrote earlier today about how the United Auto Workers union doesn’t really exist to represent autoworkers. Its biggest organizing successes in recent years have been in higher education, and there are now as many UAW members in the University of California system as there are at General Motors.

Nonetheless, it received a bunch of positive coverage from the press and fawning from politicians during its strike against Ford, GM, and Stellantis last year. You’d think it was a huge win for autoworkers. UAW president Shawn Fain was still getting hagiographical treatment from CBS News two weeks ago and was just named MotorTrend person of the year. But since the strike ended on October 30, 2023, automakers have been announcing layoffs. Some examples:

As you can see, some of the layoffs are related to the UAW’s actions, and others are not. The layoffs are consistent with global trends in the car industry. For example, Volkswagen is in the midst of an $11 billion cost-cutting program that will result in job losses. The cost-cutting at VW and elsewhere is in large part due to depressed demand for electric vehicles despite automakers’ efforts, usually with government support, to shift their production in that direction.

The UAW has cheered for that transition, and it has endorsed Joe Biden, who is leading that transition in the U.S., for reelection. At least 98 percent of its campaign contributions in every election cycle since 1990 have gone to Democrats, who have consistently been the party pushing electric vehicles in more recent years, both at the state and national levels.

And now, after the UAW’s big “win,” the layoffs are still coming, because at some point when you’re making products not enough people want to buy, money gets tight and cuts have to happen. There’s nothing Shawn Fain can do or say to change that fact, and there’s no use pretending that organized labor can suspend the laws of economics.