Europe’s Electric Vehicle Woes Are a Lesson for EVs Everywhere
On October 18, Stellantis workers in Italy carried out a 24-hour nationwide strike, culminating in a rally that brought an estimated 20,000 people out to Rome’s Piazza del Popolo. UAW members recently authorized their own strike against Stellantis, and are in tense negotiations with the company over unrealized investment commitments. The company has filed 9 federal lawsuits against the UAW and 2 dozen locals disputing the union’s contract violation claims and right to strike over them, arguing the pledge was always “contingent upon plant performance, changes in market conditions and consumer demand.”
Amid all this, Tavares has tried to paint himself as a stalwart defender of electrification, ready to weather the winds of change even if that proves difficult in the near-term. Speaking to the Financial Times at the Paris Auto Show, he warned that slowing the transition to electric vehicles would be “a big trap,” and blamed governments for failing to provide adequate incentives to make the switch. Unions on either side of the Atlantic, however, argue that they’re paying the price for Stellantis’s longtime, short-term focus on maximizing profits and executive pay.
“Stellantis has underinvested in this,” i.e. the electric transition, says Maurizio Oreggia, international coordinator for the Italian metalworkers’ union FIOM. He agrees that the Italian government and European Union aren’t doing enough to offer public support for electrification; bolstering those is among FIOM’s top demands. But he also sees Stellantis’s own choices as a key reason why the automaker is falling behind. “This transition is necessary given climate change, if you look at the situation of the planet. But we’ve known we have to do this for many years,” he adds. Instead of reinvesting profits into research and development, improving working conditions or electrification, “they have distributed profits to shareholders, never to the workers.” Earlier this month, Stellantis announced that it had bought $1.1 billion worth of stock back from shareholders since August. Tavares received a 56 percent pay bump last year. Defending his lavish compensation package in April, Tavares said it was simply part of the contract between himself and the company, “just as there are contracts for soccer players and for Formula 1 drivers.”
