The UAW Region 6 report offers a blueprint for a new green industrial policy in California that empowers local and state-level organizing to ignite just energy transitions. The report calls for an industrial policy that deliberately shapes which goods and services the market produces, how they are produced, and how they are distributed. To put it simply, states should reclaim their power to push for clean energy over fossil fuels, enforce just and equitable labor conditions, and facilitate in-state supply chains. Yet California currently relies on its weakest policy tools, like subsidies, effectively ceding control of economic development to powerful corporations whose only metric of success is their bottom line. “Call it industrial policy by omission,” says UAW Region 6.
The result is energy markets driven by corporate profit, neglecting the long-term well-being of people, the environment, and the economy. But states have real power. The barriers to building a decarbonized future that lifts working-class living standards are largely self-imposed, argues UAW Region 6. Restrictive laws, limited technical and administrative capacity, political opposition from entrenched corporate interests, and lawmakers’ reluctance to mobilize the necessary resources to achieve their own policy goals all impede major green economic transformations.
This policy toolkit provides strategies for how the California state government can build institutional capacity to shift energy market power from private industry to public institutions, unions, and communities. This marks a stark departure from the Inflation Reduction Act’s reliance on subsidies for investors and consumers. Instead, it urges California to implement strong industrial policy reforms, such as public financing, public interest conditions, industry regulation, price management, public procurement, and public ownership and production of energy. But California still lacks a centralized authority to coordinate private market regulation or facilitate a pro-worker, green industrial strategy.
That’s where SB 787 comes in. Jointly developed by UAW Region 6 and Senator Jerry McNerney of Stockton, SB 787 would create the infrastructure necessary to oversee and implement in-state supply chains, decarbonization, and affordability in three key sectors: zero-emission vehicles and batteries, offshore wind, and heat pumps. This bill marks the first bold move for workers and the state to reclaim control from corporate interests dominating California’s industrial economy.
SB 787 prioritizes these industries as critical clean energy solutions for California. The state is home to robust renewable and clean energy resources, including enough lithium in the Salton Sea to produce 375 million EV batteries, and 200 GW of OSW potential. California also plans to install 23 million heat pumps to help decarbonize buildings, which generate a quarter of its emissions. SB 787 would establish state institutions to coordinate, invest in, and fund these projects, ensuring that community and labor voices are placed at the forefront. This includes holding companies accountable for environmental and community commitments, consulting Indigenous tribes, developing local supply chains, and expanding state-funded job training.
California can push forward bold industrial policies to give workers and frontline communities a seat at the table. But the first step, UAW insists, is building the state institutional power necessary to guide both the state and the private market toward a just and sustainable future. California has the resources. Now it needs the political capacity to build up economies that are mutually beneficial for workers, economic development, and our environment in the long-term.
“The oligarchs in Washington D.C. would have us believe it is impossible, that there’s no hope. In the labor movement, we’re used to the rich and powerful telling us what is and isn’t possible. And we’re used to proving them wrong,” the report concludes.
