Opinion How Gretchen Whitmer is quietly solving a big problem for Democrats
Passed through Michigan’s Democratic-controlled state legislature last month, the package would mandate the generation of electricity with 80 percent carbon-free sources by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040 — sources that can include wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas combined with carbon capture. While many states have such mandates, only a few require such a rapid transition; the New York Times reports that Michigan’s pace will rival that of California.
Crucially, the bills also require clean electricity jobs to match local prevailing wages and working conditions. The package creates a state office to help workers displaced by the energy transition move into new clean energy jobs.
To be sure, the measures are hardly perfect. Some environmentalists had demanded that the package phase out energy sources such as natural gas. And the bills were initially opposed by organized labor, because, at the outset, they lacked the pro-worker provisions.
Climate action tends to expose cracks in the Democratic coalition precisely because it aggravates existing tensions between the goals and interests of environmentalists and workers. But in a surprise, after long negotiations between the governor, labor advocates and Democrats in the state legislature, the end product pleased most climate activists and labor officials.
“Michigan is leading the way in creating high-road labor standards that protect good-paying jobs while providing a pathway to a clean energy future,” Ryan Sebolt, director of government affairs for the state’s AFL-CIO, told me. As energy work evolves, Sebolt said, the bills will ensure that these remain quality jobs “long into the future.”
That’s strikingly positive talk given that organized labor has long been skeptical that such a balance can be achieved. And it comes with good news on another front: United Auto Workers members are close to ratifying their new contracts with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. These contracts will cover a large number of workers at electric-vehicle battery plants, another sign that the transition could translate into quality green-energy manufacturing jobs in the future.
All of this is very heartening stuff. If working people come to see that they have a stake in the green transition, it could help build durable political support for it over time.
“This is a multi-decade-long transition to remake the energy system,” said Jesse Jenkins, a climate expert at Princeton University. “The only way we’re going to accomplish that is if we sustain a political coalition to see that process through.”
Opponents of the green transition understand the fault lines in that coalition perfectly well. When former president Donald Trump traveled to Detroit to speak about the UAW strike, he railed that the transition to electric vehicles will ultimately destroy autoworkers’ livelihoods. Michigan, one of the three “blue wall” states that Trump won in 2016, is trending Democratic but will be heavily contested in 2024 with Trump making exactly that sort of appeal to the state’s industrial workers.
At the same time, Whitmer and Democrats are using the majorities they won in 2022 to pass a range of socially liberal measures — from new LGBTQ+ protections to repeal of an antiabortion statute — that are often said to be driving working-class voters from the party. But they are doing this while also appealing to workers’ material interests: Earlier this year, they repealed Michigan’s anti-union “right to work” bill, and now, they’re passing a climate bill that working people can learn to love.
If Michigan Democrats can win back working people by passing solid pro-labor legislation without abandoning the party’s deepest priorities on cultural issues — and defeat Trump in the industrial heartland — that would be a big step forward. But if they can also pull this off on climate, it could provide a model for more efforts to sell the green transition as a boon to workers in difficult political territory going forward.
And the stakes riding on getting that one right are impossible to overstate.
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