Ford hasn’t made it a secret that it has struggled to supply and promote electrical automobiles at a revenue. Earlier this 12 months, the venerable automaker estimated that it’s going to lose $3 billion on its electrical automobile division in 2023. Ford introduced final week that it could scale back EV manufacturing to deliberately scale back provide to match demand as a result of their automobiles are too costly for his or her potential prospects. Nevertheless, The American Prospect argued in opposition to Ford’s course, stating America’s underpaid workforce is extra of the issue, whereas additionally untangling the parable surrounding Ford’s excessive wages in the course of the Mannequin T’s manufacturing.
First, the argument that electrical automobiles are costlier than comparable combustion automobiles is considerably exaggerated. The difficulty massive stems from the choice to impress solely probably the most worthwhile and bodily largest fashions. For Ford, that might 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 automobiles, with their battery packs crammed with hard-to-source minerals, are costly, round $55,000 on common in response to Kelley Blue Guide. However that’s not removed from the common value of any new automobile, which is now near $50,000. The massive drawback for EVs from a value standpoint is that the entire trade has determined that the one method to cater to American tastes is to make their EV fleet out of vehicles and SUVs, eliminating the economical sedans that is likely to be reasonably priced.
Ford’s determination to cut back EV manufacturing starkly contrasts the extensively perpetuated mythology surrounding the corporate’s historical past. Most individuals have heard how Henry Ford paid his staff nicely 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 strains staffed.
As fable would have it, Ford raised the wage as a result of he understood that his automobiles wanted patrons, and by setting the usual for decently paid manufacturing staff, 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 boost wages, to not create patrons however to carry on to his staff. Circumstances of labor on the early meeting strains had been brutal (see, e.g., Charlie Chaplin’s Trendy Occasions), and the turnover fee on the early Ford factories was stratospheric. Ford didn’t contemplate slowing down the strains, however he did rethink his pay charges, and by elevating them nicely above the present norm, he managed to stanch the one-way circulation of Ford staff although the manufacturing facility exits. (This similar coverage is alive and perniciously nicely at Amazon immediately, which attracts its warehouse workforce by paying greater than native opponents however retains a Trendy Occasions-esque tempo of labor.)
Ford and the country’s different two main automakers got here into battle with their staff after they organized within the following many years. The contracts with the United Auto Employees 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 Huge Three might need come into battle with the UAW once more. Whereas Ford’s electrical automobile division is dropping cash, Detroit’s automakers are nonetheless seeing earnings within the vary of billions of {dollars}. Rising societal inequality has now impacted what would have been Ford’s major buyer base in prior many years, and the producers might 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 Huge Three auto corporations (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) for its new contracts. The UAW spent final week highlighting the Huge Three’s document revenue bulletins: $1.9 billion for Ford within the second quarter (triple that of a 12 months 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 making 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 strains for a lot of months to win the sort of contracts that created the uncommonly widespread prosperity of that point.
Your entire piece is price a learn, particularly when you’re an government at a Huge Three automaker. It’s a stark illustration of how we’re at an important level the place employee-worker relations might form the course of the nation’s economic system because it has accomplished prior to now.
