Local Black elected leaders aligned with racial and economic justice groups want to build on the labor gains made through the United Auto Workers’ six-week strike. The union’s tentative deals with the big three automakers include major wins such as a 25% rise in pay and getting rid of the two-tier worker system.

More than 60 Black political leaders, many of them city council members and mayors and school board members in Washington D.C., and 20 states, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Michigan — including Muskegon Vice Mayor Willie German Jr. — wrote President Joe Biden this week asking him to use his political power to push for higher standards in the rapidly growing electric vehicle industry. A few weeks ago, GM also agreed to cover electric vehicle battery manufacturing under the contract.

Biden, who spoke in support of the auto workers’ demands and marched in a UAW picket line during the strike, should continue to support changes in the industry, the letter says, by mediating conversations between workers, unions and automakers.

The elected officials say standards of compensation, safety and health for workers should be a priority for those talks. The Biden administration has made investments in electric vehicles a big priority in its economic agenda and has stated that the federal dollars spent on these investments will benefit workers and “expand high-paying manufacturing jobs” and help them “capture the economic benefits of the clean energy transition.” Nearly $1.7 billion in funding from Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be spent on electric buses, and organizers of the letter say they don’t want to see the money spent on plants that don’t provide good jobs for workers.

Advocates say these efforts are…