“I earned the right to build the next American car”: How autoworkers and communities confront electric vehicles

Abstract

Recent climate and infrastructure legislation in the United States emphasizes the accelerated manufacture and deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) as a major decarbonization strategy. The implications of this transition toward EVs on those who have traditionally worked within the automotive industry and surrounding communities have yet to be evaluated in the literature. It is unclear whether the move to EVs will create non-union positions that are hourly, temporary, and lower-paid. Through 67 focus groups across six deindustrializing cities in the American Midwest, we bring analytical tools from cultural sociology into the Just Transitions literature to examine how autoworkers, former autoworkers, managers, and community members imagine the future of the EV transition. Our findings underscore a marked divergence between the people who assemble cars and the people who manage workers or are part of communities that may benefit from new technologies. Managers and community members expressed confidence in the automobile industry's history of agility and ability to “bounce back” from challenges that confront it. In contrast, autoworkers held deep skepticism about the transition to EVs, on issues ranging from access, usefulness, and infrastructure, with many believing that the technology itself is over-hyped, not appropriate for consumers' needs, and merely a political charade. Workers suspect that their past contributions will be forgotten and express suspicion about the green energy transition. Our findings underscore the need to consider how differently situated groups imagine the future costs and benefits of energy transitions in order to effectively build coalitions across civil society, workers, and government.