They unfortunately have to balance this with keeping their members employed, and their members salaries high
Many of the workers jobs are the same with either technology: autoworkers making auto bodies, running the paint shop etc should succeed equally with either technology so you could just as well argue that the union is letting them down. Those working on the drivetrain or powerplant are the ones who could use the new skills. Focusing on helping the latter is supporting the infrastructure that would help the paint shop folks should that part of the business change in future.
The net result is that everyone is poorer (as defined by purchasing power) and lower demand means lost jobs and decreased negotiating ability for the union.
Or put another way, internalizing the costs of driving and making SUVs and trucks doesn’t make everyone poorer, it means that the public is t paying the costs for the private benefit of a few
https://uaw.org/solidarity_magazine/2023-uaw-union-built-veh...
Making an inferior product that is bad for society shouldn’t be an argument for government favoritism.
If a UAW plant making <whatever> shuts down and is bought by Tesla or Toyota and starts making Teslas or Toyotas, they're not being made by UAW workers (nor any union autoworker).
Even if the plant is making gas F-150s and retools to make a Ford BEV, there's no assurance that Ford will sell the same number or same profitability of that BEV than they did of the F-150. If they sell way fewer BEVs than they used to sell F150s, that also hurts UAW workers (though not as much as the UAW plant closing entirely).
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023...
(I'm not taking the UAW's side here; I am merely explaining why the union is making the argument they're being paid to make.)
They should be lobbying for tax breaks at unionized EV plants. It seems pretty clear that the ICE is on its way out, no reason to cling to it when they should be trying to get in on what is clearly the next thing.
It would be a shitty union if they just sat back and watched as all their members became impoverished.
We actually do have a retraining mechanism in this case. The UAW has a program called the "National Vocational Retraining Assistance Plan" available to laid off members.
It would be a shitty union if they lobbied for the entire country to use outdated, and less efficient technology in order to benefit a few thousand people temporarily.