Would you rather start and run a business in a state that will not make it a pain in the rear end to get up and running, won’t put massive amounts of regulations and roadblocks in the way, won’t micromanage you with tons of government, and won’t take a good chunk of your money, or, one that will? How about one that works to protect your business and employees from crime? Tries to keep the cost of living low?
Biden’s clean energy factory jobs may elude U.S. union workers
President Joe Biden has pledged that fighting climate change will deliver millions of middle-class jobs with good wages to Americans with union membership cards.
But in the six months since passage of Biden’s signature climate change law, a large majority of the $50 billion of announced investments in domestic manufacturing to support the clean energy transition has been in states with laws that make it harder for workers to unionize, according to a Reuters analysis of corporate and state announcements.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes tax credits for businesses that produce clean energy components in the United States, and provides higher credits for developers of renewable energy projects if they use products made domestically.
Of the more than 50 EV battery, solar panel and other factories announced since passage of the Act in August, 83% are located in so-called right to work states, which bar companies from requiring workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment, according to a Reuters review of company announcements.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t unions, just fewer, and fewer folks who are forced to join them, having their money forcibly taken to support unions they don’t agree with. And the cost of doing business, the cost of energy, cost of land, etc, tends to be lower in right to work states. So, that’s where companies will go. All for green energy protects to solve an imaginary problem.
Yes of course, Teach, these new jobs will go to the states with low wages. We hope that will help our poorer citizens as we spread the wealth of our country to all states.
Do you think this jobs plan will win Biden votes in swing states? Will the newly hired workers already be “Greene lefties”? Or might the formerly red voters turn politically in that direction after getting those fat paychecks? Is this whole program a conspiracy to buy bites in red states? Is this a SOROS plot? Should this be allowed to happen?
Dear H:
Employers act in their own self interest. So do employees.
If having a union makes sense the employees will establish one.
If not, they won’t.
People are leaving CA because they can’t afford to live there.
People move into every state (some from other states, some from other countries) and people move out of every state. People die and babies are born. So, state populations are in always in flux. CA still has over 39 million people but the population has been slowly dropping since 2020. Primarily, fewer moving in.
Companies oppose unions. So do conservatives and Repubicuns. Labor unions help balance the power between workers and management. Government protections for workers have supplanted some of the need for unions, but not all. Company profits are rising faster than workers wages, i.e., the rich get richer, the workers get poorer.
Union workers in the 27 right-to-work (for less) states make 23% more than non-union workers there, a gap greater than in the 23 Union states. It goes without saying that union states have higher average household incomes than right-to-work states, but most right-to-work states are red states with greater problems than just Unions. Of the right-to-work states only AK, ND, WY, MI, WI and VA are in the top 25 nationally in wages/income, meaning that right-to work states dominate the bottom 25 (21 out of 25!). Again, opposition to unions is not the ONLY reason that red states are poorer states. Mississippians make 60% of what Massachusettsians, Massachusetters… people in Massachusetts, make.
“We hope that he will find it in our favor and we’ll be able to develop this oil field,” Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, said.
“America simply must do two things at once: we have to be able to continue to develop natural oil and gas reserves here in Alaska, and we have to be able to build towards a climate future that’s free of these types of carbons,” she continued. “But we have to do two things at once, it’s pretty simple.”
DITTO
You cannot cancel oil and gas. Period. At least not for 30-40-50 years. Our entire economy is based on Petroleum. Not just ours but the world’s.
Stupid fuking AGW Nazi’s.
Dear Elwood:
Plainer:
Employers act in their own self interest. So do employees.
If having a union makes sense the employees will establish one.
If not, they won’t.
People are leaving CA because they can’t afford to live there.