In the first episode of our second season of RedBlue Conversations, co-host Prescott Watson speaks with Nora Eckert to discuss the UAW strike and ongoing labor negotiations of September & October 2023. Nora is a reporter with the Wall Street Journal focused on the major American carmakers and is part of the Journal’s leading automotive team.

Nora has spent much of the last two months embedded in the negotiations, and we are lucky to have her as a conversation partner. We discuss:

* What’s behind UAW’s aggressive opening to this negotiation? Demands for a 40% wage increase and a 32 hour workweek are a response to BOTH a 30-year decline in labor’s power in the American auto industry. But they are also a result of a very specific set of political circumstances in Union leadership with the rise of Shawn Fain.

* Will increased labor costs really derail EVs? Nora and Prescott dive into the arguments from both labor and management. How deeply will increased labor costs in both legacy and new factory roles impact the profitability of EV lines for Ford, GM and Stellantis? Hint: the major losses all three are incurring on their EV product lines may start with labor, but they certainly do not end there.

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