UAW win helps nonunion workers too as Tesla is latest to hike pay
Tesla has announced that it will raise factory worker pay for some workers at its Nevada Gigafactory by 10% or more. The news comes not long after UAW’s historic strike wins, in which it earned 25% pay increases at all of the Big Three American automakers.
After VW, Hyundai, Toyota, and Honda did the same recently, this shows how union wins tend to affect entire industries, raising conditions for even nonunionized companies who have to compete for workers.
CNBC reported that Tesla internal documents confirmed that workers at the Gigafactory will receive “cost of living adjustments” of between $2.00 and $8.30 per hour, with raises of 10% or more for most hourly workers at the plant. It will also “streamline” wage tiers and reduce the differences in pay between them.
These are two major points of the UAW negotiation, which not only sought raises but also cost-of-living adjustments (which UAW gave up as part of negotiations after the 2008 financial crisis and only just got back in this year’s negotiations) and the elimination or reduction of tiered pay structures. CNBC’s report doesn’t state whether Tesla’s timelines have been made shorter, but the wage progressions will be compressed to have fewer tiers.
Tesla is currently in the sights of UAW as a potential target for unionization. But UAW is not the only union targeting Tesla. The automaker is currently facing a strike from workers in Sweden as the nation’s largest industrial union, IF Metall, wants Tesla to sign a collective bargaining agreement (an agreement the likes of which 90% of Swedish workers are covered). This strike has been gradually expanding via sympathy strikes over time.
The new pay raises will take effect starting January 2024, just two weeks from now.
Other companies have also raised pay
Tesla’s raises aren’t the only similar recent announcement from a nonunionized company.
Last month, Volkswagen of America announced that it would increase wages in a press release. It was pretty light on details but said that the wage increase would start in December and that a compressed wage progression timeline would begin in February.
Volkswagen of America annually evaluates compensation for our production team members at the end of the year to ensure we continue to offer a competitive and robust compensation package designed to attract and motivate employees who make our daily operations possible at the plant.
Prior to that, Hyundai announced a 25% pay increase for nonunionized workers by 2028, matching the headline 25% gain that UAW won in its negotiations. Hyundai COO Jose Munoz said, “Hyundai continuously strives to maintain competitive wages and benefits commensurate to industry peers.”
Also, Honda raised the wages of some workers by 11%, along with a faster progression to the top of the wage scale and additional benefits like child care and student loan help. Honda said it “continuously reviews our total rewards packages to ensure we remain competitive within our industry.” The company also said, “We will continue to look for opportunities to ensure that we provide an excellent employment experience for Honda associates.”
And Toyota took the opportunity to hike the pay of most of its US assembly workers by 9.2% immediately after the UAW deals were announced. After Toyota’s pay hike, UAW President Shawn Fain recognized that it was a response to his union’s new contract, saying, “Toyota, if they were doing it out of the kindness of their heart, they could have chosen to do it a year ago.”
The “UAW Bump”
Fain called these wage increases “the UAW bump” and said, “UAW, that stands for ‘U Are Welcome.’”
UAW wants to maintain this momentum and has openly stated that it wants to unionize more nonunionized companies in the US. In UAW’s original strike victory announcement, Fain said that it plans to come back to the bargaining table in 2028 on May 1, otherwise known as May Day or International Workers’ Day, but that time, it “won’t just be with a Big Three, but with a Big Five or Big Six.”
At the time, he didn’t specify who exactly those extra two or three companies would be, but later, we found out when UAW launched a campaign to unionize the entire auto industry at once. So perhaps UAW is aiming for even more than a Big Five or Big Six at this point.
Tesla specifically has been brought up, too. President Biden said he would support UAW’s push to unionize Tesla and Toyota, with Honda’s pay raise announcement coming right after that well-publicized meeting.
(Note: this article has been updated multiple times as more automakers have announced pay raises for US factory workers since UAW’s win)
Electrek’s Take
Unions are having a bit of a moment in the US, reaching their highest popularity ever since surveys started asking about them.
Much of union popularity has been driven by COVID-related disruptions across the economy, with workers becoming unsatisfied due to mistreatment (labeling everyone “essential,” companies ending work-from-home) and with the labor market getting tighter with over 1 million Americans dead from the virus and another 2-4 million (and counting) out of work due to long COVID.
Unions have seized on this dissatisfaction to build momentum in the labor movement, with unions striking successfully across many industries and organizers starting to organize workforces that had previously been nonunion.
Announcements like these show how high union membership has a tendency to improve working conditions for every worker and why the US has had gradually lower pay and worse conditions over the decades since union membership peaked. It’s really not hard to see the influence when you plot these trends against each other.
It’s quite clear that lower union membership has resulted in lower inflation-adjusted compensation for workers, even as productivity has skyrocketed. As workers have produced more and more value for their companies, those earnings have gone more and more to their bosses rather than to the workers who produce that value. And it all began in the 80s, around the time of Reagan – a timeline that should be familiar to those who study social ills in America.
Conversely, these raises show the impact that unionized workers can have, not only for their own shops but for nonunionized workplaces as well. If workers gain a big pay increase in one part of an industry, all of a sudden, workers at other companies might start thinking they want to jump ship, maybe move over to another company where they can get better pay or better conditions. To retain workers, companies then need to raise wages.
In addition, nonunionized companies may want to keep their employees nonunionized and thus see the pay raises as a way to satiate their employees into maintaining the status quo. If workers at Toyota see that UAW workers are getting huge pay increases and lots of additional benefits, maybe they’ll think that UAW can bring them the same benefits and start talking about unionizing.
Companies generally think they should avoid having a unionized workforce because a unionized workforce means more pay for workers, which to them means less pay for the executives and shareholders making the decisions. So they’ll offer whatever carrots they can to keep workers from organizing to have their voices heard collectively. Individually, workers have little influence over what their pay and conditions should be.
All of this isn’t just true in the US but also internationally. If you look at other countries with high levels of labor organization, they tend to have more fair wealth distribution across the economy and more ability for workers to get their fair share.
We’re seeing this in Sweden right now, as Tesla workers are striking for better conditions. Since Sweden has a 90% collective bargaining coverage, it tends to have a happy and well-paid workforce, and it seems clear that these two things are correlated. And while that strike is continuing, meaning we haven’t yet seen the effects of it, most observers think that the workers will eventually get what they want since collective bargaining is so strong in that country.
These are all reasons why, as I’ve mentioned in many of these UAW-related articles, I’m pro-union. And I think everyone should be – it only makes sense that people should have their interests collectively represented and that people should be able to join together to support each other and exercise their power collectively instead of individually.
This is precisely what companies do with industry organizations, lobby organizations, chambers of commerce, and so on. And it’s what people do when sorting themselves into local, state, or national governments. So naturally, workers should do the same. It’s just fair.
And it’s clear that it helps – so even if you aren’t unionized yourself or have a job that doesn’t lend well to unionization, you should probably be happy about other union efforts since they tend to buoy entire economies for the people who are creating the value in the first place – the workers.
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A $5.7B lawsuit filed in Federal court alleges that Toyota operated what amounts an organized, fraudulent enterprise that intentionally concealed known, catastrophic safety defects associated with their hydrogen fuel cell-powered Toyota Mirai sedans.
Originally passed as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is designed to help prosecutors go after people or companies that commit a pattern of crimes as part of an ongoing organization or enterprise — like the Mafia (which doesn’t exist), or large-scale fraud operations at a corporation.
That RICO statute is now at the center of a new case against Toyota. In it, the plaintiff’s attorneys argue that Toyota knowingly engaged in a decade of fraud surrounding the hydrogen fuel cell-powered MIrai sedan that jeopardized public safety and breached the terms of a previous DOJ settlement.
The case, filed by Jason M. Ingber, lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the US District Court for the Central District of California, is a 142-page RICO complaint alleging that Toyota, its financing arm, and its California dealerships coordinated conspired to market and finance HFCEVs that technicians allegedly referred to as, “ticking hydrogen bombs.”
“This lawsuit isn’t about a simple defect, it’s about organized fraud,” argues Mr. Ingber. “Toyota engineered, financed, and controlled California’s hydrogen network, then used that control to hide safety failures and financial harm to consumers.”
According to the complaint, Toyota and its hydrogen partner, FirstElement Fuel (True Zero), intentionally concealed evidence of:
- hydrogen leaks near hot engine components, creating explosion risks
- sudden power loss, acceleration, and braking failures leading to collisions and injuries
- a collapsing hydrogen infrastructure, leaving drivers stranded for weeks without access to fuel
- aggressive financial collection tactics by Toyota Motor Credit Corporation, targeting owners of inoperable vehicles.
The suit further argues that Toyota’s concealment of these facts violates a 2014 Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), in which the company admitted to concealing safety defects surrounding the highly publicized incidents of unintended-acceleration and agreed to report all (emphasis mine) future safety issues truthfully.
Ingber is seeking treble damages for the class, injunctive relief, and a federal order halting Toyota’s hydrogen enterprise, citing a continuing pattern of mail and wire fraud.
“Toyota built its reputation on trust,” Ingber said, in a statement. “Our case will show how that trust is violated and why consumers deserve accountability now.”
The case is titled Aminah Kamran et al. v. Toyota Motor Corporation et al., and is docketed as Case No. 2:25-cv-09542.
Electrek’s Jo’s Take
Despite the ebb and flow of media chatter about hydrogen fuel, the simple fact is that America’s hydrogen infrastructure isn’t, and what little infrastructure we did have took a hit last January, when Shell abruptly closed its publicly-accessible charging stations. That left precious few open and operational hydrogen stations available for public use – and the ones that are open don’t seem to be reliable, with Car Complaints reporting that Toyota Mirai owners say they can’t find working hydrogen refueling stations while others complained they had to park their cars for weeks because they couldn’t find hydrogen.
As a result, with supply issues impacting the few stations that are still available (see the DOE’s Alternative Fuels Data Center map, below), it’s tough to argue that Mirai buyers may not have gotten what they were expecting – regardless of the killer, 50% off plus $15,000 in free hydrogen fuel deals that were being offered.
Loading alternative fueling station locator…
SOURCE | IMAGES: CBS News, via CarScoops; Car Complaints.
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Solar and wind together accounted for 88% of new US electrical generating capacity added in the first eight months of 2025, according to data just released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) which was reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign. In August, solar energy alone provided two-thirds of the new capacity, marking two consecutive years in which solar has led every month among all energy sources. Solar and wind each added more new capacity than natural gas did. Within three years, the share of all renewables in installed capacity may exceed 40%.
Solar was 73% of new generating capacity YTD
In its latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through August 31, 2025), FERC says 48 “units” of solar totaling 2,702 megawatts (MW) came online in August, accounting for 66.4% of all new generating capacity added during the month. That represents the second-largest monthly capacity increase by solar in 2025, behind only January when 2,945 MW were added.
The 505 units of utility-scale (>1 MW) solar added during the first eight months of 2025 total 19,093 MW and accounted for 73.4% of the total new capacity placed into service by all sources.
Solar has now been the largest source of new generating capacity added each month for two consecutive years, between September 2023 and August 2025. During that period, total utility-scale solar capacity grew from 91.82 gigawatts (GW) to 156.20 GW. No other energy source added anything close to that amount of new capacity. Wind, for example, expanded by 11.16 GW while natural gas’ net increase was just 4.36 GW.
Renewables were 88% of new capacity added YTD
Between January and August, new wind has provided 3,775 MW of capacity additions – more than the new capacity provided by natural gas (3,095 MW). Wind thus accounted for 14.5% of all new capacity added during the first eight months of 2025.
For the first eight months of 2025, the combination of solar and wind (plus 4 MW of hydropower and 3 MW of biomass) accounted for 88.0% of new capacity, while natural gas provided just 11.9%. The balance of net capacity additions came from oil (20 MW) and waste heat (17 MW).
Solar + wind are almost 25% of US utility-scale generating capacity
Utility-scale solar’s share of total installed capacity (11.62%) is now almost equal to that of wind (11.82%). If recent growth rates continue, utility-scale solar capacity should equal and probably surpass that of wind in the next “Energy Infrastructure Update” report published by FERC.
Taken together, wind and solar make up 23.44% of the US’s total available installed utility-scale generating capacity.
Moreover, almost 29% of US solar capacity is in the form of small-scale (e.g., rooftop) systems that are not reflected in FERC’s data. Including that additional solar capacity would bring the share provided by solar + wind to more than a quarter of the US total.
With the inclusion of hydropower (7.59%), biomass (1.06%), and geothermal (0.31%), renewables account for a 32.40% share of total US utility-scale generating capacity. If small-scale solar capacity is included, renewables make up more than one-third of total US generating capacity.
Solar is still on track to become the No. 2 source of US generating capacity
FERC reports that net “high probability” net additions of solar between September 2025 and August 2028 total 89,953 MW – an amount almost four times the forecast net “high probability” additions for wind (23,223 MW), the second fastest-growing resource.
FERC also foresees net growth for hydropower (566 MW) and geothermal (92 MW), but a decrease of 126 MW in biomass capacity.
Meanwhile, natural gas capacity is projected to expand by 8,481 MW, while nuclear power is expected to add just 335 MW. In contrast, coal and oil are projected to contract by 23,564 MW and 1,581 MW, respectively.
Taken together, the new “high probability” net capacity additions by all renewable energy sources over the next three years – i.e., the Trump Administration’s remaining time in office – would total 113,708 MW. On the other hand, the installed capacity of fossil fuels and nuclear power combined would shrink by 16,329 MW.
Should FERC’s three-year forecast materialize, by early fall 2028, utility-scale solar would account for 17.1% of installed U.S. generating capacity, more than any other source besides natural gas (40.0%). Further, the capacity of the mix of all utility-scale renewable energy sources would exceed 38%. Including small-scale solar, assuming it retains its 29% share of all solar, could push renewables’ share to over 41%, while natural gas would drop to about 38%.
“Notwithstanding impediments created by the Trump Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, solar and wind continue to add more generating capacity than fossil fuels and nuclear power,” noted the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director Ken Bossong. “And FERC foresees renewable energy’s role expanding in the next three years while the shares provided by coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear all contract.”
Read more: EIA: Solar + storage dominate, fossil fuels stagnate to August 2025
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![Kia's electric van spotted in two surprising new versions [Video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/11/Kia-PV5-versions.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Is it an electric van? Pickup truck? The PV5 can do it all. Kia’s electric van was caught with two new body types for the first time.
What PV5 version is Kia planning to launch?
The PV5 is more than just a futuristic-looking electric van. It’s what Kia calls “the world’s most useful electric mobility vehicle.”
It’s the first from its new Platform Beyond Vehicle (PBV) business, which will offer a wide range of customizable EVs, advanced software, and much more.
During its PV5 Tech Day event in July, Kia revealed plans to introduce seven PV5 body types, ranging from a light camper to an open-bed truck.
The PV5 Passenger and Cargo, built for personal and business use, are already rolling out in Europe and South Korea. The Cargo Compact (available in 3- and 4-door configurations) and the Cargo High Roof are also available.
New variants will include an open bed, a light camper, a luxury “Prime” passenger, a built-in truck, and a refrigerated truck.
The refrigerated truck was captured driving in public for the first time in South Korea, offering a closer look at what’s coming soon. Kia will launch three PV5 refrigerated truck models: low, standard, and high.
The video from HealerTV reveals the standard and high versions. In person, the reporter noted that the high version definitely appeared taller than the standard version.
Although the front looks like the PV5 Passenger and Cargo, the back is redesigned for the refrigerated unit. Kia has yet to reveal a launch date, but it’s expected to be by the end of 2025.
Another PV5 variant, the open-bed version, was recently spotted in public in South Korea. Although we’ve seen it a few times before, the new video, also from the folks at HealerTV, offers our best look at the truck-like variant from all angles.
Meanwhile, the PV5 Cargo just set a new Guinness World Record after driving 430.84 miles (693.38 km) on a single charge, while carrying a full load.
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