Electric vehicle transition kills hundreds of jobs at GM

Automaker looks to cut $2B in spending, per Detroit Free Press

By James David Dickson | May 3, 2023

General Motors will be laying off hundreds of contract workers to fund its transition from gas engines to electric vehicles, the Detroit Free Press reports.

As the Freep’s Jamie La Reau notes, these layoffs come just a month after GM announced buyouts for 5,000 salaried workers.

While automakers and politicians insist that the electric vehicle is the future of the American auto industry, the transition typically brings job cuts, not job growth. And according to the Free Press, more job losses could come:

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University, said more job cuts can be expected across GM’s workforce as the company funds its transition to all electric vehicles. That could be significant as GM will start negotiating a new contract with the UAW for its hourly workforce this summer.

“GM, like its other Detroit 3 competitors, struggles continually to realign its cost structure to shift from internal combustion to electrification,” Masters said. “This will require cuts in the salaried and hourly workforces, the contracted workforce, and the disposing of obsolete production assets as result of the shift. This is not a stationary but rather a moving target, and these kinds of adjustments can be expected as [the] pace of transition accelerates.”

Last June, Michigan lawmakers granted Ford Motor Co. $100 million to hire 3,030 workers to build electric vehicles. Two months later, it laid off 3,000 workers, mostly white collar ones, and mostly from Michigan.

Ford traded 3,000 white-collar jobs for 3,000 blue-collar jobs, and did it using taxpayer money. The company lost $5 billion on EVs in a two-year span.

GM, meanwhile, plans to transition to an all-EV fleet by 2035. That’s the same year pending regulations from the Biden aministration, if they become rules, could all but end the sale of new gas engines in America.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

Biden: COVID vaccine mandates terminate May 11

Visitors to America can travel like it’s 2019. Employees and contractors can work without medical coercion.

By James David Dickson | May 2, 2023

President Joe Biden announced this week that as of May 11, all federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates are terminated.

These include vaccine mandates for foreign travelers to America, for federal employees, and for federal contractors.

May 11 is when the final COVID-19 emergency ends. The emergency declared by President Donald Trump in March 2020 was terminated last month by an act of Congress and the president. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-declared emergency ends on May 11.

In its announcement, the Biden White House portrayed the vaccine mandate as a success:

Since January 2021, COVID-19 deaths have declined by 95%, and hospitalizations are down nearly 91%. Globally, COVID-19 deaths are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic. Following a whole-of-government effort that led to a record number of nearly 270 million Americans receiving at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, we are in a different phase of our response to COVID-19 than we were when many of these requirements were put into place.

The federal government claims a 98% compliance rate for employees, but uses an expansive definition.

“The federal government successfully implemented requirements for its workforce in a way that increased vaccination to achieve 98% compliance, reflecting employees who had received at least one dose of a vaccine or had a pending or approved exception or extension request filed by January 2022,” the announcement reads.

Compliance is defined as one dose, though most COVID vaccines require two shots. Compliance is also defined as “a pending exception or extension request.”

Foreign visitors to the U.S. have been faced with either bans on cross-border driving or vaccine mandates since March 2020. Three years and two months after the White House asked for “15 days to slow the spread,” visitors to America will be able to travel like it’s 2019.