Unionizing EV Facilities

The United Auto Workers has had only moderate success in organizing new faculties in auto, with particular trouble in the South. Just because a new facility opens doesn’t mean it is covered by the union contract. The UAW has to organize it. So this is good news out of the electric vehicle sector, which is obviously a major growth field in auto.

Workers at an Ohio plant that makes batteries for General Motors voted overwhelmingly to unionize the first factory originally built for electric vehicles and components, federal workforce officials said Friday, jump-starting the labor movement in the fast-growing EV industry and the fight against climate change.

Employees at Ultium Cells, a joint venture of GM and LG Energy Solution in Warren, Ohio, voted 710 to 16 to join the UAW, according to the National Labor Relations Board. That gives the powerful union a foothold in the new wave of EV component and assembly plants unleashed by historic clean-energy investments pushed by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress.

Union officials have been worried about the future of the labor movement as automakers sprint toward zero-emission vehicles. Much of that work is slated for new facilities in the South — rather than the auto sector’s traditional geographic center in the industrial Midwest — where companies have eyed tax incentives dangled by governors and lower labor costs often attributable to less hospitable organizing environments.

710-16 is a pretty good vote! But the southern problem still needs to be figured out, if anyone really can.