President Biden recently celebrated a landmark labor deal that kept a Stellantis manufacturing plant in business, using an appearance in Illinois to shore up crucial union support. Biden also made the case for clean energy even as many workers fear the president’s climate change agenda could endanger their jobs. 

The Biden administration has proposed the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations yet, which would ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars are all-electric by 2032. If enacted, the rules could sharply lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse emissions.

But they also come with costs for autoworkers, because it takes fewer than half the laborers to assemble an all-electric vehicle as it does to build a gasoline-powered car.

David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs, notes that while new factories will be needed to build electric vehicle batteries, the vehicles will require fewer suppliers producing parts. Many assembly workers will also need to be retrained. “We may also need fewer workers,” Popp says. But, he says, “there doesn’t seem to be a consensus yet on whether that is the case.”

Read more in the New York Times article, “Biden Bolsters Union Support in Illinois.”