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Ford hasn’t made it a secret that it has struggled to provide and promote electrical autos at a revenue. Earlier this yr, the venerable automaker estimated that it’ll lose $3 billion on its electrical automobile division in 2023. Ford introduced final week that it will scale back EV manufacturing to deliberately scale back provide to match demand as a result of their autos are too costly for his or her potential clients. Nevertheless, The American Prospect argued in opposition to Ford’s path, stating America’s underpaid workforce is extra of the issue, whereas additionally untangling the parable surrounding Ford’s excessive wages through the Mannequin T’s manufacturing.
First, the argument that electrical autos are costlier than comparable combustion vehicles is considerably exaggerated. The difficulty massive stems from the choice to affect solely probably the most worthwhile and bodily largest fashions. For Ford, that may be the F-150 Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E. The Mach-E attaching the Mustang nameplate to a crossover SUV-sized automobile.
It’s true that electrical vehicles, with their battery packs stuffed with hard-to-source minerals, are costly, round $55,000 on common in keeping with Kelley Blue Ebook. However that’s not removed from the typical worth of any new automobile, which is now near $50,000. The large drawback for EVs from a worth standpoint is that the entire business has determined that the one technique to cater to American tastes is to make their EV fleet out of vehicles and SUVs, eliminating the economical sedans that could be reasonably priced.
Ford’s resolution to scale back EV manufacturing starkly contrasts the broadly perpetuated mythology surrounding the corporate’s historical past. Most individuals have heard how Henry Ford paid his employees properly so they may afford to purchase the Mannequin Ts they constructed. It’s a fable that was a byproduct of a employee retention scheme meant to maintain Ford’s relentless meeting traces staffed.
As fable would have it, Ford raised the wage as a result of he understood that his vehicles wanted consumers, and by setting the usual for decently paid manufacturing employees, he was giving the working class the power to buy his Mannequin Ts. The historical past is a little more nuanced: Ford needed to be persuaded by his fellow executives to lift wages, to not create consumers however to carry on to his staff. Situations of labor on the early meeting traces have been brutal (see, e.g., Charlie Chaplin’s Trendy Instances), and the turnover fee on the early Ford factories was stratospheric. Ford didn’t think about slowing down the traces, however he did rethink his pay charges, and by elevating them properly above the present norm, he managed to stanch the one-way movement of Ford employees although the manufacturing facility exits. (This similar coverage is alive and perniciously properly at Amazon immediately, which attracts its warehouse workforce by paying greater than native opponents however retains a Trendy Instances-esque tempo of labor.)
Ford and the country’s different two main automakers got here into battle with their employees after they organized within the following a long time. The contracts with the United Auto Staff raised wages, included annual cost-of-living changes and bonus ties to the corporate’s productiveness. The agreements created an unprecedented shared prosperity that helped forge the idealized picture of post-WWII America.
The Large Three may need come into battle with the UAW once more. Whereas Ford’s electrical automobile division is dropping cash, Detroit’s automakers are nonetheless seeing income within the vary of billions of {dollars}. Rising societal inequality has now impacted what would have been Ford’s major buyer base in prior a long time, and the producers may face one other reckoning within the close to future.
Ford’s announcement final Thursday additionally got here on the similar time that the UAW, now underneath new and apparently extra militant management, is getting into into talks with the Large Three auto corporations (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) for its new contracts. The UAW spent final week highlighting the Large Three’s file revenue bulletins: $1.9 billion for Ford within the second quarter (triple that of a yr earlier), $3.2 billion for GM within the second quarter (a 39 % enhance), and $12.1 billion for Stellantis within the first half of 2023 (an all-time excessive).
One among the many many ways in which the brand new UAW management is getting ready its members for potential strikes is through the use of social media to indicate scenes from its militant previous, enabling its members to witness how the Walter Reuther–led social democratic UAW of the mid-Twentieth century walked picket traces for a lot of months to win the type of contracts that created the uncommonly widespread prosperity of that point.
The complete piece is value a learn, particularly when you’re an govt at a Large Three automaker. It’s a stark illustration of how we’re at a vital level the place employee-worker relations may form the path of the nation’s financial system because it has carried out prior to now.
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