SWING STATE NEWS: Michigan Union Members Blame Biden Electric-Vehicle Mandates for Auto-Industry Layoffs: ‘Want to slit our throats’; Stellantis Layoffs Result of Anti-Worker Agenda

Michigan union members blame Biden electric-vehicle mandates for auto-industry layoffs: ‘Want to slit our throats’:

The auto industry is big business in Michigan, and a major round of layoffs is revving the election into high gear for industry workers in the critical swing state — who blame the Biden-Harris administration’s heavy-handed electric-vehicle mandates for the painful job losses.

Stellantis, which manufactures Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles, announced last month it will lay off 2,450 workers at its Warren plant. While industry jobs in the state have been declining since 1990, Michigan autoworkers explained to The Post why Team Biden’s green-energy rules are at fault this time.

United Auto Workers member Isaiah Gordon, 24, works on hybrid batteries at Ford’s Rawsonville plant and said the forced transition to electric vehicles is damaging the industry.

“I’m sure all the people I work with are glad to have jobs. But the problem is in these electric-vehicle departments, you’re laying people off,” Gordon told The Post.

Fellow UAW member Chris Vitale, a technician mechanic for Chrysler, agreed, saying electric cars require considerably less labor to produce than gas-powered vehicles.

“Putting an electric motor together is like building a pinwheel or a paper airplane, there’s some level of work that’s involved with it, but the skill level really isn’t there,” Vitale told The Post.

Rep. Lisa McClain echoed that sentiment — and decried how it harms autoworkers.

“Less parts mean less employees. That’s why they’re doing the layoffs. Because they can’t sell the vehicles that the government, particularly Kamala Harris, is mandating them to buy,” the Republican congresswoman told The Post.

“Listen, you wanna buy an EV car? Great,” she continued. “But the autoworkers, the automakers know that we can’t survive because the infrastructure isn’t there on EVs. Nobody wants to buy them.”

Ford slashed more than 1,000 jobs at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn after drastically scaling back its production of the F-150 Lightning, an all-electric pickup truck. —>READ MORE HERE

Roberts: Stellantis layoffs result of anti-worker agenda:

As of 2022, Stellantis was the second largest employer in Detroit. Now that may change after the company announced last month that it would be laying off 2,450 people, possibly shifting those jobs to a plant in Mexico.

It’s a major blow for Warren Truck Assembly, which has been running for 84 years since it was opened as “Dodge City.” Now, Michiganians are understandably asking who is to blame.

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month, Democrats pointed the finger at conservatives and corporate greed. On night one — with pro-Hamas protests outside and a Planned Parenthood mobile clinic on site — United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain tried to make the case that Democrats represent America’s workers, straining to brand Vice President Kamala Harris a great “defender of the working class.” She’s “one of us,” he claimed.

But Americans see that today it is the Democrats, not Republicans, who have cozied up to corporate interests and are shipping American jobs overseas. Kamala Harris is a professional politician from Berkeley, California — not a daughter of the Rust Belt.

She seems to care more about climate change than American workers.

During her first year in office, from 2021 to 2022, working people endured some of the worst inflation in American history. Supercharged by the Biden-Harris administration’s non-stop government spending, prices on goods like groceries jumped an average of 11.2%. No one suffered more than blue-collar workers in Michigan. Of all America’s major cities, Detroit’s sticker shock was the worst, with prices on milk, eggs, and other basic goods spiking by more than 14%.

Meanwhile, the vice president’s radical climate agenda has been putting those same people out of a job. Last year, the Biden-Harris administration introduced new Environmental Protection Agency regulations that mandated that electric vehicles must make up 67% of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2032. Models like the Ram 1500 Classic can’t survive under these emissions rules, leading to the situation at Warren. —>READ MORE HERE

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