Middle class or permanent underclass?
Electric vehicles and the jobs of the future in Lordstown, Ohio.
John’s Journal
This is where I hastily scribble about what’s going on. May include righteous anger and typos.
Have you heard of More Perfect Union? I collaborated with them on the East Palestine report and a bevy of TikToks.
Do yourself a favor and subscribe to their YouTube channel. Their whole bag is “media with a mission to put power back in the hands of working people”.
We dig it. Today’s newsletter is a collarboration with MPU. They did some original reporting on Ultium Cells in Lordstown, Ohio that I happily hosted for the video below.
I have another project in the works with MPU. We went to a Trump rally in Erie, PA last weekend to talk old-timey worker power with the rally goers. We left enough room in the conversation to get away from the white hot culture wars, and dive deeper where the political affilation is more fluid and less reactionary.
The results were surprising. I think you’ll like it. Stay tuned around the middle of August for that!
Member Supported Media
We are what we eat. The Holler is serving up a media diet of working class power that’s hard to find these days in the era of billionaire engineered propaganda on every channel.
Our media generates tens of millions of views each year with a one person part-time staff on a shoe string budget. It’s all thanks to you. Please subscribe now for only $5/mo ($60/yr) to keep us going.
The wages of the future are being set now in Lordstown, Ohio
Will we save ourselves from creating a permanent under class or further cement it in stone? This is the question being answered right now as the future of electric vehicles unfolds in Lordstown, Ohio.
For six decades, General Motors was the leading employer in town. Generations of families buttered their bread at the Lordstown plant. Then it closed in 2019, putting out 1,300 workers and adding another dark milestone to the wiki pages of the Rust Belt.
A year later, GM went big on electricity and created mass demand for batteries. Biden and the Democrats scrounged up 2.5 billion dollars, thanks to their climate legislation, and loaned it out to Ultium - the new partnership between GM and LG that will manufacture GM’s batteries at three plants that employ 11,000 workers.
One of them is in Lordstown, but the new boss isn’t quite the same as the old.
Rather than make the batteries under GM/UAW labor contracts that helped build the middle class, Ultium was formed as a new company in part to skirt the old contracts with high wages and start the power struggle fresh with the new industry. Workers at Ultium, where everyone is “family”, start at $16.50/hr.
The work is fast and dangerous, a trend reflected elsewhere in the economy as the balance of power between workers and bosses has tipped firmly in capital’s favor. Workers at Ultium have reported minimal training, exposure to hazardous chemicals, and electrocutions. Twenty two injuries were reported in just the first five months of operation at Ultium. Whistleblowers reporting dangerous conditions have been suspended without pay.
Ultium workers unionized with the UAW in 2022 and are now in the bargaining process. The company says publicly that they’re committed to the bargaining process, while offering cheap deals to the workers that come nowhere close to the prior GM/UAW standard.
All of this involves your money. 2.5 billion federal dollars made this industry possible, and this industry is making it impossible for their workers to get ahead. Will this be the standard for the future?
The President, you know, working class Scranton Joe, talks a lot about being the most pro-union president ever, and how his administration is creating jobs with dignity that rebuild the middle class. But the loan he made possible for Ultium came without mandates for good middle class wages.
The federal government could enforce wage standards as they do in other industries, the question is, will they?