Good morning.
The UAW seems to have forgotten that it played a major role in almost destroying the American auto industry in the 1960s and ‘70s. Now it may be doing the same again. But history rhymes, it doesn’t repeat. This time, the real threat is not Japan, or even cheap labor in China, but a devilishly complex transition to electric vehicles. And despite recent profits, the Big Three’s ability to successfully make that transition remains far from assured. An overpriced labor contract will only add to the difficulty. The Wall Street Journal produced the must-read story of the weekend, with the headline: “Whatever the UAW Strike Outcome, Elon Musk Has Already Won.” It shows how UAW demands would give Musk a massive cost advantage.
Which of course puts Musk right where he always wants to be—at the center of attention. I spent the weekend reading Walter Isaacson’s new book on the enigmatic mogul and thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s not much of the story that’s new, and what is new has already been ladled out in multiple pre-publication "exclusives." But Isaacson had unparalleled access to Musk, his family, and his closest associates. He tells the story in spare and muscular prose—free of polemics. Some critics have chided him for not taking sides and declaring Musk either hero or villain. Isaacson concludes he is both. The book has no final summation, but the last chapter includes this paragraph:
“Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness? The times he’s an asshole? The answer is no, of course not. One can admire a person’s good traits and decry the bad ones. But it’s also important to understand how the strands are woven together, sometimes tightly. It can be hard to remove the dark ones without unraveling the whole cloth. As Shakespeare teaches us, all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex. Even the best people, he wrote, are ‘molded out of faults.'"
By the way, I’d ignore the politicians trying to argue the UAW’s fight is about rebuilding the American middle class. The UAW is fighting for its members. A true strategy to rebuild the middle class needs to ignore the populists of both right and left and adopt a more nuanced agenda of interlocking tax, trade, technology and training initiatives.
More coverage of the strike here and here. More on the Musk book here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
