UAW pens neutrality agreement with seabed mining company
The United Auto Workers union has entered into a labor neutrality agreement with a company that plans to scoop potato-sized rocks off the ocean floor containing nearly every mineral needed to build an electric vehicle battery.
The Metals Company is a Canada-based firm that has secured exclusive access to portions of the Pacific Ocean seabed more than 1,000 miles southwest of San Diego, which they hope to begin mining by the end of 2024.
The neutrality agreement with the UAW means The Metals Company will not oppose an effort by workers to organize through the Detroit-based union. The UAW indicated in a statement that the company plans to build processing and refining facilities in the U.S. that the union plans to attempt to organize.
"We have insisted that the transition to electric vehicles must not come at the expense of autoworkers, their families, and communities," UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement. "We commend TMC for showing companies that the way forward should include respect for the rights of their future workforce to join together and collectively bargain for good wages, benefits, and working conditions."
The Metals Company is one of the few private firms with a license to explore in a 400,000-square-mile area of the ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. It claims its stake of the seabed alone contains enough battery metals to power 280 million electric vehicles — enough to replace the entire U.S. passenger fleet.
Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company, said in a statement that the firm is "pleased to be working hand in hand with such a forward-thinking organization as the UAW" and praised the union's reputation "for protecting workers, protecting the environment, and fighting for justice."
The company is developing methods to harvest the rocks and turn them into battery metals at a time when the automotive industry is rapidly transitioning to electric vehicles, and at a time when forecasters estimate both the world and the United States will fail to meet demand for EV battery minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite by steep margins in the coming decade.
During an interview late last year with The Detroit News, Barron held up a small black rock: "These nodules, like the one I hold in my hand, are the new oil."
The mineral supply chains that do exist for EV batteries globally are largely controlled by China, the country's chief economic rival. He argued the company can help the United States stake out its independence by providing a sustainable source of minerals to fuel the EV boom.
TMC also says the method for extracting the minerals is environmentally friendly, sending giant collection machines to the ocean floor to suck up the polymetallic nodules and a thin layer of sediment surrounding them. The rocks would be sent back to shore for processing and the sediment would be pumped out to settle back on the seabed.
But scientists and environmental groups are raising alarms that the process isn't as low impact as it is made out to be. They say it could have far-reaching effects on the ocean ecosystem, including wildlife destruction and contamination from sediment kicked up by mining machines.
"There's a pretty clear foundation of science that we know there are going to be some serious negative repercussions for mining on ocean biodiversity," Douglas McCauley, a professor of marine biology at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told The Detroit News last year.
More than 600 scientists and policy experts signed a letter urging the U.N. to put a hold on any mining licenses, arguing it could result "in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning that would be irreversible on multi-generational timescales."
They say that mining activity would devastate the rare species that live near the ocean floor and send up plumes of sediment that could settle miles away, release toxins or carbon dioxide, or taint fisheries that enter the human food system.
Barron said their concerns are "nonsense" and that the process would cause far less damage than open-pit mining.
The International Seabed Authority, a body made up of 167 member states and the European Union but not the United States, is crafting environmental regulations and a royalty system for seabed mining in the area that must be complete by July 2023.
A New York Times investigation found the agency provided the company with key data helping them secure some of the most valuable tracts of seabed beginning 15 years ago.
rbeggin@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @rbeggin