Carmaker factories and the workers who help run them are seemingly optimistic about their own ability to shift and adapt to political and technological evolution, according to the union leader.
“If necessary, they can build a new plant in under a year. The tooling now is pretty much interchangeable,” Pannebecker said. “They change over to new models on the fly. So a lot of the technology allows them to do that very quickly, and they have the excess capacity to do it.”
“When you hear people like [Ford’s] Jim Farley say, ‘Well, you know, we don’t want to have to do that, and it would be really costly,’ those are just excuses and bluster,” he further criticized.
“But the fact remains,” Pannebecker continued, “if they’re going to be using robotics in the new technology and automation, we want it done on this side of the border, not south of the border in Mexico. So we’ll take whatever jobs they have. Detroit is still the Motor City, and we want every auto job, every vehicle that’s sold in the United States, we want to build it.”
He also reflected on how Trump kept a personal promise, after Pannebecker allegedly brought forth information from a high-level whistleblower at Chrysler-owned Stellantis who opposed a plan to move production to Mexico after the current UAW contract expires in 2027.
“A whistleblower came to me and asked me to get that information to President Trump. He was a very high [up] vice president at Stellantis,” he said. “I announced that at a rally on stage with President Trump, and he told me after that rally, ‘Brian, I’m not going to allow that to happen.’ And he has kept his promise.”
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