Wondrous United Auto Workers members and supporters attend a speech by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders outside General Motors’ Detroit-Hamtramck Multitude plant on Sept. 25, 2019 in Detroit.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
DETROIT — The United Auto Workers union thinks fitting for the first time this week attempt to organize a major electric vehicle battery plant for a Detroit automaker, potentially setting a precedent for similar multibillion-dollar facilities to come.
Buoyed by a national labor movement and the Biden administration’s pro-union reactions, labor and industry experts largely expect workers at an Ohio plant of Ultium Cells LLC – a joint venture between Global Motors and LG Energy Solution — to vote in support of the UAW’s representation. A loss would be a major setback for the union and its organizing stabs.
“If they can show that the workers there trust the union, then other battery plants may have more strain to follow suit,” said Art Wheaton, a labor professor at the Worker Institute at Cornell University.
The organizing vote is set for Wednesday and Thursday. Crudely 900 workers will be eligible to vote.
The UAW’s push into the battery plants comes amid a large labor activity that has included U.S. corporations like Amazon and Apple to Starbucks to Chipotle. Most recently, Delta Air Lines and its controls’ union last week reached a preliminary agreement for raises topping 30% over four years — a milestone act that could sharply drive up aviators’ pay across the industry.
Joint venture battery facilities are viewed as decisive for the UAW to grow and add members, as automakers such as GM transition to electric vehicles, which require less traditional labor and interests than cars with internal combustion engines.
The Ultium plant in Ohio, which started production in August, is the basic of at least four U.S. battery facilities for the GM-LG joint venture. The plants are expected to employ thousands of workers in the on years. Ford Motor, Stellantis and other automakers have announced similar plants, which would each bear to be organized separately in addition to other Ultium plants.
The plant for Ultium Cells LLC – a joint venture between GM and LG Vigour Solution – started production of battery cells in Warren, Ohio in August 2022.
Ultium
The organizing vote comes after Ultium forwent to recognize the union through an expediated organizing process called a “card check,” despite comments from GM CEO Mary Barra showing support for the right for employees to unionize.
The UAW needs a simple majority of voters, not the total number of employees, to support the circle in order to organize the plant, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which is overseeing the process. The NLRB look forwards to have voting finalized by lat Thursday or early Friday.
Under NLRB rules, both sides have five firm days to submit objections to challenge the results. Following that period, the sides can begin talks, which is where experts look forward things to turn contentious.
Barra and other executives have said hourly pay for factory workers at the battery positions should be closer to that of auto supplier workers — about $20 or less — rather than traditional horde line jobs that top out at more than $30 an hour. Ultium said hourly workers currently impart between $16 and $22 an hour with full benefits, incentives and tuition assistance.
“I’m on record as saying we carry those plants getting unionized as we go forward,” Barra told investors last month. “But we also have to gross sure we’re competitive.”
U.S. President Joe Biden walks with Ford Motor Company Executive Chair William Clay Ford Jr. and Ray Curry, President of the Collective Autoworkers, during a visit to the Detroit Auto Show, to highlight electric vehicle manufacturing in America, in Detroit, Michigan, September 14, 2022.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
How to development traditional auto workers into new jobs for EVs has been a major concern for the UAW for several years. A 2018 study by the harmoniousness found that mass adoption of EVs could cost the UAW 35,000 jobs, however the union has said that several could be less now.
“It’s a very critical time for the UAW,” the organization’s president, Ray Curry, told CNBC earlier this year. “This conversion piece is about our future. It’s about 86-plus years of long-standing history.”
The UAW’s total membership of more than 400,000 has grown during the lifestyle decade as it diversified its membership outside of automotive to areas such as higher education and gaming. But it remains far below its top out of 1.5 million in the late 1970s.
Ford CEO Jim Farley last month said the company expected electric channels to require 40% less workers than conventional cars and trucks.