The United Auto Workers union has never been a friend of conservatives. One of the top issues in the early days of National Review was supporting Wisconsin bath-fixtures manufacturer Kohler in its struggle against the UAW. Walter Reuther called a strike against Kohler that ended up lasting six years, and Kohler hired nonunion workers who were beaten by union thugs. After the Left called for a boycott, NR in 1956 called for consumers to prefer Kohler, going so far as to say, “If Kohler starts producing peanut butter, we’ll eat Kohler Peanut Butter till it comes out of our ears.”

The UAW remains an opponent of conservative causes to this day. In each and every election cycle from 1990 through 2022, more than 98 percent of its campaign contributions have gone to Democrats. Over a quarter of the union’s membership is now composed of hyper-progressive higher-education workers, and it has been far more successful convincing graduate students to unionize than it has been convincing nonunion autoworkers to join.

In December 2020, the UAW reached a settlement with the Department of Justice after a yearslong fraud and corruption investigation. More than a dozen top union officials, including two former presidents, were convicted of crimes for embezzlement of workers’ dues. As part of the settlement, the DOJ appointed an attorney to monitor the UAW for up to six years. The monitor’s July 2022 status report found that the UAW was withholding information from the DOJ, and there were still 19 open investigations into union wrongdoing.

This corrupt, left-wing organization is willing to inflict significant economic damage on the rest of the country if its members don’t get 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work, a 46 percent pay raise, and defined-benefit pensions. On top of those demands, the UAW is also at an impasse with automakers because of the federal government’s centrally planned “transition” to electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles are much less complicated than ordinary cars. Fewer workers are needed to produce them. In other contexts, fewer workers producing the same number of products is a good thing. But that’s only the case when it’s a product consumers actually want. The shift to EVs is being driven by government, not by the market. As Democrats have used legislation and the administrative state to push electric vehicles far faster than the technology permits, the UAW has kept the donations flowing, and progressives have cheered.

So have the Big Three automakers. Their cozy relationship with Washington was solidified by the bailout they received in 2009. Contrary to politicians’ talk of the need to save the automotive industry, GM and Chrysler (now Stellantis) were merely reaping what they had sown through years of poor management and financial profligacy. Other automakers, many of which concentrate their production in right-to-work states, made it through the recession without government help.

The UAW pension plan ended up as majority owner of Chrysler as part of the reorganization, and it didn’t have to take the haircut a bankruptcy court likely would have required of it had the federal government not been calling the shots. Since the UAW has far more retired members than it does active members, it was also happy with its cozy relationship with government.

So after shoveling member dues to Democrats and cheering on the expansion of government into its industry for years, the UAW is now saying it is withholding its endorsement of Joe Biden for reelection because of his EV plans, as though it wasn’t obvious all along that his administration would be run by climate-policy fundamentalists who would do exactly this sort of thing. And the self-described most pro-union president in American history could be facing economic fallout because of his pals in organized labor.

A full strike against GM, Stellantis, and Ford could cause $5 billion in economic damage in only ten days, according to an estimate from Anderson Economic Group. The union claims it has a strike fund of $825 million — why, pray tell, is it “pro-worker” to withhold almost a billion dollars from workers and give it to them only when you order them to not work? — which could support a strike for up to three months. If the UAW succeeds in its exorbitant demands, at a time when the switch to EVs is placing and will continue to place heavy demands on their resources, those three firms would be at a considerable competitive disadvantage, with the extra costs being passed on to consumers. Not only that, the Big Three may be beginning to have to face the challenges to their bottom line that may come with producing more EVs than consumers want to buy.

If only someone had warned about the dangers of entangling government with industry and supercharging organized labor at the expense of sound business management. Wait a minute, conservatives did! Consistently and repeatedly. For years and years. And now, thanks to their EV mandates and the subsidies that come with them, carmakers are coming close to becoming wards of the state.

As the Big Three continue to drive down the road to serfdom, car production will continue in the United States. If economic logic prevails (which is not a certain assumption), it will, despite taxpayer-funded incentives to do otherwise, be more concentrated in low-tax, right-to-work states (a trend that is already well under way) where businesses can provide competitive compensation without being bullied by the UAW. For now, those carmakers can make popcorn and enjoy watching their competitors struggle. But the increasingly strict government EV mandates are coming for them as well. Let’s hope their spectating on this debacle encourages them to stand up to government and avoid a similar fate.