Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appears to have reversed her plans for an all-electric vehicle future before President Donald Trump revoked a 2021 executive order that called for 50% of new vehicle sales to be electric.

Now, she just wants Michigan to remain the nation’s top auto manufacturer.

“We don’t care what you drive – [a gas-powered vehicle], hybrid, or EV – we just care that it’s made right in here Michigan,” she said in her “Road Ahead” address.

Southern states, including Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, have attracted auto plants, Whitmer said.

“Some of them are just writing blank checks to companies,” Whitmer said. “Well, that’s bad.”

“The future of the entire auto industry is at stake. The very core of Michigan’s economy is on the line.”

The apparent change of heart follows Michigan offering at least eight companies more than $1 billion each in taxpayer funding through cash-for-jobs programs since 2021, The Detroit News reported.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation said, “All we do is win,” but the reality is starkly different, according to a recent study.

Only one of every 11 jobs promised by Michigan politicians and public officials in announcements about business subsidies gets created, according to a study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

The Mackinac Center found that only 9% of the jobs announced in major state-sponsored deals from 2000 to 2020 were created.

Since 2023, Michigan has promised $4.6 billion in subsidies to select, favored corporations.

In one instance, Michigan paid out $600 million to a General Motors and Ultium joint venture before it created any jobs, The Detroit News reported.

About 50,000 electric vehicles are registered in Michigan. Whitmer wants 2 million EVs by 2030, according to the MI Healthy Climate plan.

To reach that goal, Michiganders must register 32,500 EVs monthly for five years.

Electric vehicles aren’t the only car choice, Rep Dave Prestin, R-Cedar River, told Michigan Capitol Confidential in a text message.

“This one-track mindset has devastated the auto industry by crippling the free market and taking choices away from Michigan drivers,” Prestin wrote.

A rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required about 67% of new light-duty and medium-duty sales to be electric by 2032.

A recent legal dispute over parking spaces between the Michigan Nurses Association and a University of Michigan hospital is only the latest in a series of unusual conflicts in Michigan created by special demands from organized labor.

Labor unions typically bargain on behalf of employees over paid time off, worker pay and workplace conditions. But unions and employers also fight over unconventional issues such as the price of vending machine food and how many criminal offenses a teacher may have and stay on the job.

Nurses prevailed last month in a struggle over parking lot protocols. The University of Michigan altered employee parking arrangements to create more spaces for patients. The Michigan Nurses Association in 2019 demanded that the university make more parking spaces available for nurses and requested to bargain over the issue.

The hospital refused, and the union filed a complaint with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. The commission ruled in favor of the nurses, and on Dec. 9, 2024, the Michigan Court of Appeals concurred.

The parking space case is one of many disputes that have arisen over bargaining issues whose connection to workers’ rights and wages is not immediately clear.

In 1979, the UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after Ford Motor Co. announced an increase in vending machine prices. The union requested to bargain over prices, and the company refused.

The federal board sided with the union. Ford disputed that decision in court. After the company exhausted its appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The high court ruled in favor of the National Labor Relations Board, and Ford was forced to bargain with the union over vending machine prices.

“It isn’t clear to me why the union doesn’t just go for the highest wages and benefits possible,” said Christopher Douglas, associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan-Flint and member of the Mackinac Center Board of Scholars.

Expensive vending machine food could offset some of a pay increase, Douglas noted. But wage gains apply to all workers, while a discount on vending machine food effectively means those who eat vending machine food get subsidized by those who do not. A similar dynamic applies to bargaining over parking spaces. If people who work at the hospital walk or take public transportation, they get no benefit from discounted parking.

Another unique bargaining tactic played out in a school about 100 miles north of Ann Arbor.

The Bay City Public Schools contract allows school employees who sell drugs the opportunity to keep his or her job thanks to a union provision in the district’s collective bargaining agreement.

The contract calls for disciplinary actions for people who are “involved in the unlawful sale, manufacture, or distribution or dispensation of tobacco, alcohol, or illegal drugs.”

The first offense is referred to as “activity.” If a union employee engages in an activity that state law classifies as a misdemeanor, the first offense will result in a three-day suspension and mandatory counseling. The Bay City contract expires in 2025. Michigan Capitol Confidential reported on the issue April 2024.

“These terms show just how out of hand collective bargaining in Michigan has become,” said Steve Delie, labor policy director at Mackinac Center Legal Foundation.

Instead of focusing on improving educational outcomes for Michigan’s children, Delie said, unions have negotiated for collective bargaining provisions that are irrelevant. He added the state Legislature should take a close look at these terms and consider whether they are the types of subjects that schools should be forced to negotiate.