The High Road: An Explainer
The high road is the most straightforward pathway for businesses and workers to build our new energy economy.
A world where a middle-class worker with no college degree could support a family of five, own their own home, and afford two cars, solely on the income of their union energy sector job is one we find worth fighting for. Coincidentally, it is also the premise of The Simpsons…
America’s longest running sit-com has been on so long now that the economic security depicted via everyman Homer Simpson is unrecognizable to most today. To achieve this commonplace prosperity in today’s reality, we cannot ignore the path that the high road offers - one that looks quite similar to the one portrayed through Homer Simpson. Not only are these types of jobs necessary for our economy, but they are also key to the ongoing energy transition. In California, wariness around climate action today hinges more on concerns of affordability than scientific consensus. Populating our new energy industries with these types of good jobs is the necessary first step to be competitive and unite people around the energy transition.
“There is general agreement that a good, family-supporting job pays a living wage; offers a stable schedule; provides benefits such as health care, retirement, paid sick days, and paid family leave; offers wage increases as skills are acquired; provides safe and healthy working conditions; and complies with all workplace laws (e.g., wage and hour, employee classification, health and safety, anti-discrimination, workers’ compensation, and right to organize laws).”
The case for quality manufacturing jobs has never been stronger as we stare down the prospect of AI culling the workforce, deteriorating job quality, growing income inequality and laggard infrastructure. In our last post, we showed how our economy is rife with contradictions and argued that a reorientation will require actual industrial policy for our energy transition. This policy cannot be effective without a high-road framework guiding it: a more symbiotic relationship between employers and workers that will require greater collaboration around wage growth, workplace safety, promotion structures, and job training. An investment in the workforce translates into better products, higher productivity, and less turnover. Good accessible jobs are also necessary to build the political buy-in for the massive whole-of-economy energy transition required to decarbonize and compete globally. In many ways, the high-road, like industrial policy, references a time of unparalleled American growth, where strong industries were established through the advent of quality, union jobs and the creation of the American middle class. A reorientation from short-term profit towards long-term investment is critical, whether in the type of goods we produce or in the way we produce them.
Companies that embrace the high-road will find themselves with the means to create truly industry-leading products. The clear link between job quality and product quality is straightforward: better talent and training creates less turnover, higher productivity, and quality control because workers are invested in making the best products. The country’s first unionized battery plant, the Ultium Cells facility in Ohio, offers itself as a case study. Before unionization, the factory was a hazard zone, with “workers estimat[ing] annual turnover at the plant… running over 50 percent.” Since establishing a union contract with the UAW, workers have described themselves as “blessed” to be working in the facility, “mentioned a culture of promotion, and were optimistic about the potential for upward mobility.” When many battery plants closed their doors in the wake of the IRA’s upheaval last year, Ultium was able to pivot thoughtfully from making NMC batteries to cheaper LFP chemistries well-suited to future industry dynamics. Ultium had the necessary agility to make this switch because they had a strong workforce and a quickly operational facility post-contract. While it’s easy to attribute this to the pay increases that made headlines, the role of relief time, bereavement leave, staffing of safety officers, lump-sums to offset out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, and the freedom to relocate to an Ultium facility closer to their family should not be understated.
As Ford found out last year, competing for skilled workers takes more than just throwing money at the problem. Though there are strong indicators that increased wages alone result in clear business benefit – a single dollar increase can yield a 19% decrease in turnover, for example – business underrates the effect of simply improving the workplace. Something as simple as scheduling certainty can generate good will with workers, with the average one willing to forgo 20% of their salary just to have it. The Department of Energy finds that an investment in strong health and safety standards is to invest in the business itself, with “expect[ed reductions of 20% or greater in injury and illness rates and a return of $4 to $6 for every $1 invested.” The high-road is not simply a moralistic path, but also a savvy business move.
The Low Road Should be One Less Traveled
If the high road is seen as a highway to better products, lower turnover, and built-in political capital, the low road is best imagined as a dirt road to passable products, churning workforces, and public discontent when corporations move into town. It’s this unpaved low road that Tesla took to Austin, Texas in 2021, fleeing California to “avoid accountability” for the most basic public health and labor regulations. The haphazardly built Austin gigafactory has suffered annual layoffs for the past few years and is the only facility building cybertrucks. It should be no surprise that a vehicle known for its poor construction and tendency for recall was built by workers who were not effectively trained to do their job and ended up exposed to carcinogens because of it. Nor should it come as a shock that a factory plagued by accusations of wage theft and fabricated OSHA certifications for nonexistent training makes cars that were deemed the least reliable by Consumer Reports.
Tesla was an obvious first mover in the EV industry, making it the natural beneficiary of the first round of cleantech subsidies. But now, competition has caught up and practices like firing top performers simply for “flagging catastrophic fire hazards”, for example, are not going to sustain a company’s success in the fight for sector dominance. For American EVs to succeed globally, the industry will need to show the world something different than what Tesla had on offer: poorly constructed luxury goods by an unaccountable firm that thinks of itself more as a tech company than an automaker. Instead, American EVs need to be seen by the rest of the world as a pathway to career pathways, supportive workplace conditions, and quality automobiles.
The effects of the low road have implications for workers and consumers alike. Boeing’s newly solidified reputation for shoddy workmanship, for example, may appear to the public to have come from nowhere, but a closer look at its operations offers an explanation. Its consolidation of final assembly work for its 787 aircraft from a heavily unionized Washington facility to a right-to-work environment in South Carolina suggests that low-road working conditions can have a profound effect on the final product. Former Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun admitted to congress that without union protection, the company was able to retaliate against employees in South Carolina that raised safety concerns. One whistleblower noted that “when [he] raised concerns that the work was not in accordance with the processes and procedures, [he was] ordered to just do it and told there were hundreds of others waiting in line outside the gate wanting [his] job.” Boeing’s intentional shirking of high labor standards translated into such a lack of regard for manufacturing quality that even bank analysts in business journals note “that the airplane manufacturer had elevated growing profits over rigorous safety practices.” The safety of workers stepping into the factory has a clear downstream effect on the safety of consumers stepping onto the plane, particularly when crashes are clearly linked to corporate cost-cutting on the shop floor.
A Highway to Tomorrow’s Energy Transition
Just as cleantech firms looked to the stability of subsidies, investment, and energy infrastructure to enter a new market, their workers will look for the signs of dependable gainful employment. To learn what legacy companies found out over generations of contract bargaining – that high standards for health and safety, job benefits, and career pathways build a committed workforce – will give them what any good businessperson is after: an edge over the competition.
ICYMI: What We Read and Reacted to This Week:
The Business Case For EV Fleets Is Getting Hard To Ignore
A new study from Europe touts that corporate fleets making the switch from gas or diesel to electric could cut total operating costs in half.
Aptera Claims It’s Ready to Build 100 Cars a Day
Aptera, a Carlsbad maker of partially solar-powered EVs, makes this claim shortly after building its first vehicle on its new validation production line.
Judgment of the Court (Second Chamber) of 5 March 2026.
The highest court in the EU has ruled that higher wages can be used as criteria when selecting procurement contract recipients.
The firm has purchased a new 40,000 sq. foot facility in Sacramento to serve as the manufacturing hub for its dry electrodes.
BYD Launches New Fast-Charging Battery Amid Slowing Demand in China
The world’s biggest manufacturer of EVs, Chinese firm BYD, has announced its first major battery upgrade in years. Their newest blade cells charge extremely fast, reaching 97% from 10% in nine minutes. Blade cells are generally lighter and can take up less space than their more traditional counterparts.
This Chinese EV’s Fire Plan: Yeet The Entire Battery
If you’ve made it this far, you simply need to see this video…