{"id":13921,"date":"2025-04-30T23:10:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T03:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=13921"},"modified":"2025-05-06T23:10:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T03:10:58","slug":"nationalism-workers-power-and-the-myth-of-auto-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2025\/04\/nationalism-workers-power-and-the-myth-of-auto-tariffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationalism, workers’ power, and the myth of auto tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

S<\/span>hawn Fain<\/a> and the UAW have come out in favor of Trump’s tariffs<\/a>. They’re giving presentations<\/a> to support their position that free trade is bad (fair enough) and using the narrative that NAFTA killed manufacturing jobs and auto jobs in particular. \u201cThe auto tariffs are designed for a specific purpose: they raise the cost on the companies that have killed good jobs in a race to the bottom for cheap labor elsewhere while Wall Street makes a killing,\u201d says Fain. But this is working off the myth that “we don’t make anything in the US anymore.”<\/p>\n

Fain focuses on excess capacity in domestic auto assembly. He suggests that tariffs are uniquely capable of forcing auto executives to redistribute profits to workers\u2014without explaining how. Leaving aside the reality of what Trump’s tariffs are<\/a> and that we’re not being transported back in time to 1990, I don’t think this makes sense on its own terms<\/a>. More importantly, it misses the real threats to autoworkers and the role the union can play in resisting them.<\/p>\n

First, the US auto industry continues to produce millions of consumer vehicles<\/a>\u2014about 11 million a year in 2023. In the “golden age” of the UAW, let’s say 1960, it was 7.9 million<\/a>. NAFTA went into effect in 1994; auto employment rose from 1.1 to 1.4 million until 2001, with that year’s recession and as 9\/11 further stalled the auto market<\/a>. Roughly 200,000 auto workers were laid off, lowering the number of autoworkers to about 1.1 million through 2007.<\/p>\n

\"A
National automobile manufacturing employment by year, 1990-2024. Source: BLS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The most significant hit to auto employment was in 2008 due to the financial crisis. 600,000 jobs were eliminated\u2014half of all auto workers employed at the time<\/em>. It took nearly a decade to slowly tick employment back up to a million workers.<\/p>\n

The Great Recession did more than eliminate auto jobs. The Bush Administration conditioned its bailouts to auto companies on enormous concessions from the UAW. Herman Rosenfeld, a retired autoworker in Canada, explained<\/a>, \u201cThe United Auto Workers (UAW) had to match the wage, benefit, and working condition levels at the U.S. operations of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Sam Gindin<\/a>, former Research Director of the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW):<\/p>\n

The loan conditions asserted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

By no later than February 17, 2009, the Company shall submit to the President\u2019s Designee \u2026 [a] term sheet signed on behalf of the Company and the leadership of each major U.S. labor organization [essentially the UAW] that represents the employees.\u201d Over and above the elimination of any layoff benefits above customary severance pay\u2014something the union had already conceded\u2014the terms called for a reduction in workers\u2019 wages, benefits and working conditions to match \u201cno later than December 31, 2009\u201d levels that are \u201ccompetitive with the average as certified by the Secretary of Labor\u201d at the U.S. operations of Nissan, Toyota, and Honda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The federal government<\/em> led an attack on the auto workers’ union, as they did in 1979<\/a> when Jimmy Carter\u2019s administration gave loans to Chrysler while demanding wage cuts from the union. The union ultimately failed to fight<\/a> the terms of the loans in 2008 and the state succeeded in cutting<\/a> thousands of jobs, retiree health care, and \u201creplacing current workers with entry-level employees . . . making $14 an hour in wages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data demonstrating loss of manufacturing jobs across all sectors in the four recessions, 1979-2010.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The auto industry still produces millions of cars, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a> (BLS), has roughly the same number of auto workers employed as there were in 1992. The number of union<\/em> jobs has declined. Why?<\/p>\n

Jobs weren’t so much offshored as they were sped up and moved South. The US South. Michigan still has the most autoworkers in the country, but there has been an enormous move to Alabama and Kentucky, where there are no unions. The graph below shows that in 1990 there were practically no manufacturing workers employed in auto in Alabama. In 2023, Alabama was the fourth largest state employing auto workers (23,000); Kentucky was the third largest employer with 24,000 workers. That\u2019s not counting parts manufacturing, which accounted for another 30,000 and 34,000 workers, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"Alabama
Alabama automobile manufacturing employment, 1990-2024. Source: BLS.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Productivity increases (\u201cspeed up\u201d) ate at new job growth. Up through the Great Recession, manufacturing productivity rose by an average of 4 percent annually. These productivity gains were less automation and more labor reorganization. Kim Moody, writing in the journal Class & Capital,<\/em> analyzed<\/a> the rise of \u201clean production\u201d in manufacturing:<\/p>\n

The major driving force behind increased labour productivity from the early 1980s to 2007 just before the Great Recession has been capital\u2019s aggressive campaign of work intensification. This offensive has included the introduction of lean production methods with their \u201cconstant improvement\u201d in worker performance; the Just-In-Time (JIT) acceleration of the labour process (\u201cmanagement-by-stress\u201d) and the pace of supply chain networks; related work intensification programmes such as Total Quality Management that aid in filling in the pores of the work day; alternative work schedules with 10-hour shifts that maximize the productivity curve; the simultaneous introduction of Human Resource Management with its \u201cperformance assessments\u201d; the reduction in break time; and more recently, the many digital and biometric forms of workplace surveillance, work measurement and algorithm-driven work patterns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In sum, auto jobs have been most threatened by productivity gains that are the direct result of ceding control of the production process, recessions that have used crises to restructure the industry, and direct attacks by the state. If the union were to address any of these issues, it would mean that they would have to target the auto companies, fight for control of the shop floor, and even buck the state. This would require a concerted campaign to claw back management rights, attack speed-up, and politically win concessions from the employers to create jobs. Organizing unorganized plants would have to definitively break from labor-management partnerships that primarily benefit the company and adopt an \u201cus and them\u201d approach to labor relations. Focusing on NAFTA (a trade deal more than 30 years past) has meant aligning with the Trump administration and the domestic auto industry, even as Fain rightfully denounces the abduction of its members and the attacks on federal employees.<\/p>\n

\n

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see \u201cAbout Tempest Collective<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/small>
\nFeatured Image credit: Joe Ross<\/a>; modified by Tempest.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Sernatinger<\/Strong> argues that Shawn Fain and the UAW\u2019s pro-tariff stance misses the real threats to autoworkers and the role the union can play in resisting these threats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":13926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[82,322,512,330],"class_list":["post-13921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-donald-trump","tag-u-s-economy","tag-uaw","tag-united-auto-workers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/postal_workers_interview_feature_card-9-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}