Labor-green rift fogs chances for auto aid

Labor leaders are at odds with environmentalists over how to fund automakers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Watch out for family fights, Mr. President-elect. Though Democrats will control both the new Congress and White House, the battle over a multibillion-dollar auto industry bailout already is pitting two major party constituencies against each other: big labor and environmentalists.

The United Auto Workers, along with Detroit’s Big Three, are pushing for an infusion of emergency loans for the carmakers’ immediate needs — even if that means diverting $25 billion that had been set aside for creating cleaner vehicles. Environmentalists balk at that notion, saying the money is sacrosanct and insisting that any new help be tied to strict requirements for greener cars.

The intramural fight helps explain why President-elect Barack Obama has stayed vague on his views on the details of the bailout and Democratic leaders have seemed uncertain about whether to push one through. It’s also at the heart of the disagreement between Democrats and the Bush administration over how to structure any carmaker rescue.

After rushing Congress back into session last month to consider an emergency auto aid plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., abruptly reversed course and called off the debate.

Even if lawmakers decide to lend the struggling industry a hand amid warnings that one or more of the big companies could go bust before year’s end, a battle is still raging over where the money should come from — and what conditions should be placed on it.

If past history and the unwritten rules of politics are any guide, the autoworkers and their brothers and sisters in organized labor are likely to win the day for the carmakers.

The unions have often prevailed in disputes with environmental activists, particularly in resisting tough fuel-efficiency rules, by deploying their formidable organizing and lobbying clout and making the case to lawmakers that their constituents’ jobs would suffer if labor didn’t get its way.

They’ve also provided far more financial support to Obama and Democratic candidates than environmental organizations have — more than 20 times as much in the last election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance research organization.

Still, environmental groups enjoy powerful allies in the Democratic Party — Pelosi prominent among them — and exert a strong pull in policy debates.

“It is a challenge, because here you have the union core group that supports the Democratic Party and was very strong supporting Obama’s candidacy, and you have environmental groups who also are very strong in the Democratic Party, and when it comes to autos, those two constituencies conflict with each other,” said Richard W. Hurd, a Cornell University labor relations professor.

Democrats, particularly those who toppled Republicans or weathered tough re-election fights with the help of union money, “really would like to do something to help out” the auto industry, the backbone of the devastated U.S. manufacturing sector and a provider — directly or indirectly — of millions of jobs, Hurd said. “The problem is, what do you do about the environmental side of it?”

Labor and environmental activists are loath to call attention to their split, particularly at a time when both are working hard to forge alliances on key issues, including their call for enactment early next year of a massive economic recovery package that includes a $100 billion array of environmentally friendly projects estimated to create as many as 2.5 million “green jobs.”

But both concede privately that their agendas clash on the auto bailout, and people tracking the measure acknowledge that the rift has made a challenging situation even more challenging.