The United Auto Workers’ historic strike does not seem likely to let up soon. On Friday, union president Shawn Fain announced that the work stoppages would all across the country, having begun the week before in just three Midwestern car factories. There are now more than 18,000 autoworkers, from Nevada to Tennessee to Florida, out on the picket lines.

Joining them on the line at a General Motors parts distribution center in Belleville, Michigan, on Tuesday was none other than President Joe Biden, the first sitting chief executive to ever appear at such a rally. During his brief appearance, the president told the strikers that “ ,” going on to say, “Wall Street didn’t build the country, the middle class built the country. Unions built the middle class.

” Biden’s support will increase the pressure on the major automakers, but it’s also punctuated the workers’ action in a different way. The UAW strike is indeed a labor story, but it’s also a climate story—and an important one. However this thing ends, it could help determine what role blue-collar workers will play in the country’s climate adaptation and energy transition efforts, a process that the Biden administration has dramatically moved along.

Beyond UAW’s demands for higher wages and better hours, a key issue in autoworkers’ beef with the Big Three carmakers is the accelerating shift to electric vehicles. Lawmakers have supercharged , are revving up, and manufacturers are rapidly introducing new . But this future is not guaranteed to offer the same kinds of middle-class jobs and robust benefits that unionized auto workers enjoy in many states.

For one thing, electric vehicles purportedly require fewer assembly-line workers than internal-combustion and hybrid models (although some researchers have ). On top of that, much of the money for new auto and car-battery plants—along with assistance in transitioning old fossil-fuel and automotive facilities into hubs for zero-emission technology—is going to . Union workers rightfully fear that this evolving landscape may well exclude them, which is why the current strike’s demands include employment protections related to plant closures, boosts to retirement benefits, and new restrictions on the use of temp workers in factories.

The EV transition has had labor issues from the beginning. Federal stimulus funds disbursed to were not conditioned on any labor standards. (One of the most of those funds, Tesla, has in the U.

S. ) That money also bailed out the auto industry, whose slow recovery pushed the UAW to concede on (a point Biden emphasized during his union address to explain why the UAW’s latest demands are warranted). As a result, the factories powering the now-booming EV market are “ ,” former UAW member Dianne Feeley has written.

This recent history has not inspired worker confidence in Biden’s from the fossil-fuel era, one in which there are opportunities for stable middle-class employment as we swap out oil and gas for wind and solar, internal combustion engines for battery fleets and fuel cells. This has been a thorn for Democrats for years, and one of the more significant obstacles in their climate agendas. Not too long ago, candidate Hillary Clinton was hounded over her that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” something her opponent Donald Trump seized upon to ( ) claim he’d never let such a thing happen as chief executive.

And President Barack Obama’s clean-power goals were repeatedly characterized as a “war on coal,” despite the fact that before he assumed office. That attack line Obama’s messaging around his investments in a climate-change transition to ensure that fossil-fuel laborers could apply their skills and know-how to develop wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, and other clean energy sources. Still, there was reason for labor to mistrust the feds.

As historian out, when the federal government imposed new restrictions on Big Tobacco in the late 1990s, it offered several tobacco farmers buyouts for their fields—but did not grant them pathways toward other agricultural jobs that could support their livelihoods. Another instance from this summer: In late June, Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills encouraging offshore wind turbine buildout because it required that relevant companies adhere to project labor agreements, which often enshrine higher wages and benefits for workers.

It was only after substantial pushback that Mills later relented and agreed to , including collectively bargained salaries and bans on employing temp workers (a similar measure to what the UAW is fighting for). At one point, the UAW would’ve had a bit of federal backing in the Biden administration’s proposed Build Back Better legislation, which helped kick off nationwide EV investments. In late 2021, however, Democratic Sen.

Joe Manchin of West Virginia for drivers who , effectively excising the measure from future climate legislation—even though it had the . As it turned out, the only companies at the time whose products would qualify were . There’s an argument to be made, as Manchin did, that restricting such benefits to customers of the country’s biggest carmakers could add an anti-competitive element to the EV race.

But, viewed from another way, a credit like this may have had the benefit of encouraging auto companies to negotiate in good faith with organizing workers. The credit might have also assured Ford, GM, and Stellantis that union labor would equate to better sales because of the resulting cost savings for car buyers interested in the typically expensive EV market. But thanks to Manchin (who was by anti-union carmakers like the ), no labor standards were attached to the legislation’s clean-tech disbursements.

And now, one of the new strikes has landed in his backyard, with laborers at joining their UAW comrades on the picket lines. So now, the is playing out again in the political messaging around the current UAW pickets. Republican Georgia Gov.

Brian Kemp, federal green-energy investment, claims that his makes it an ideal location for EV executives and workers. Republican Ohio Sen. J.

D. Vance tepidly claims to support the workers while arguing they’re getting the climate transition is dragging jobs to EV powerhouse China ( ), in a line echoed by Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis, the latter of whom wants to retract all clean-car subsidies. Other 2024 GOP contenders like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley have taken the opportunity to , earning the former .

There’s much speculation on whether Donald Trump will actually stand with UAW strikers during his visit to Michigan, even though Shawn Fain has of his union endorsing the Republican front-runner, and there is as of yet the strike efforts (although he is certainly ). In fact, what Republicans are missing in their lines here is that UAW isn’t against EVs so much as . After the strike launched last week, Fain co-published a Guardian op-ed with Democratic Rep.

Ro Khanna that proclaimed, “ . ” This followed Fain’s support of a multibillion-dollar Biden administration just-transition investment, which the union president praised as “ . ” In the Michigan Senate, which is considering a bill to create a just-transition office within the state’s Labor Department, .

Biden should keep seizing the moment, then, to explain why his EV investments are good for jobs and for the climate. As for the auto industry, executives whose companies have received generous federal funds should set an innovative, fair . If UAW can swing that out with the Big Three, the effect could spread to other climate-related sectors : electricians, wind and solar technicians, construction workers.

It’s not just Biden who’s banking on blue-collar workers getting a fair shake in the clean-energy future. It’s all of.