Posts tagged Ultium
UAW scores supermajority at BlueOval SK in 2025’s first big labor win
January 27, 2025 // The supermajority vote by workers at BlueOval SK occurred after attending a town hall-style meeting in Elizabethtown, Kentucky with UAW members from Ultium Cells in Lordstown, Ohio last month. The Lordstown Ultium plant makes battery cells for GM and Honda electric vehicles and, like the BlueOval SK (BOSK) project, is a joint venture between one of the Detroit 3 and a Korean battery brand (in the case of Ultium, GM and LG; in the case of BlueOval SK, Ford and SK On).
The United Auto Workers Meet Electrification
August 22, 2023 // LeRoy and Whiton calculated in their report that battery factory subsidies will range from $2 million to $7 million per job over the ten-year duration of the 45X program. One of their case studies is the $3.5 billion BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall, Michigan. So far, the facility has been awarded $1.7 billion in state and local government subsidies, in addition to qualifying for an expected $6.7 billion in federal 45X credits. Yet wages at the battery plant will average around $45,000 a year. The gap between the sheer amount of money on the table for manufacturers and the quality of job it translates into is the IRA’s weakest link. “The states where these facilities are located should be publicly saying that in exchange for such subsidies the company should allow for voluntary [union] recognition votes,” LeRoy suggested.
A big clash is coming for Detroit’s Big 3 automakers as their workers’ union gears up for another round of contentious negotiations
July 27, 2023 // "We have to be able to do whatever we have to do if you want to have these gains. The companies aren't going to freely give it," Fain said in June. Escalating tactics at the UAW predate Fain. In 2019, at the height of the union's corruption scandal, the UAW initiated a 40-day strike at GM's more than 30 US factories. The work stoppage helped the union notch wins on wages and job security, even as the company won the ability to close several factories. In the end, GM lost some $3.6 billion due to the strike. The union, which also covers workers in other industrial industries and some academic institutions, has also had high-profile work stoppages at John Deere in 2021 and the University of California in 2022. Fain has said he is not ruling out a strike in this round of talks, potentially at more than one company.
The Morning Shift: UAW Faces An Uphill Fight On Unionizing Battery Plants
June 9, 2023 // While workers at the Ultium are organized and fighting for a contract, once agreed it won’t be applicable to workers at other EV facilities. Instead, UAW will have to run organizing drives and bargain locally at each site. Meanwhile, Ford has plans for three sites with SK On and one with Chinese partner CATL in Michigan; Stellantis will open a new plant with Samsung SDI in 2025; and GM has three U.S. battery plants coming with Korean partners, so the UAW will have its work cut out for it.
Focus organizing drives on workers without college degrees, US unions told
May 8, 2023 // n contrast, unionization hasn’t taken off nearly as rapidly at many blue-collar, lower-paid workplaces. No other Chipotle restaurant has unionized since workers in Lansing, Michigan, voted last August to make theirs the nation’s first unionized Chipotle. Only one Amazon warehouse is unionized in the US, just two Apple stores and four Trader Joe’s. Those companies have mounted fierce anti-union counterattacks to slow and they hope stop the spread. Chris Rosell, the Teamsters’ organizing director, says one reason unionization of blue-collar workers often doesn’t catch fire is that it’s frequently easier for anti-union consultants to scare and deter those workers. “Blue-collar workers often aren’t as educated about this union-busting stuff,” he said. “They could be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics.” Rosell said the Teamsters often run elaborate campaigns that seek to inoculate workers from the pressures and propaganda from anti-union consultants. He said the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien, hopes to double the union’s membership and focus organizing on such area trucking, warehouses and sanitation work. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights group, says it’s often harder to unionize blue-collar workers because they tend to have less economic security than educated workers and have greater fear of what will happen to them if they’re retaliated against, perhaps getting fired, for seeking to unionize.
AUTOS UAW withholding Biden reelection endorsement until EV concerns are addressed
May 5, 2023 // Leaders of the United Auto Workers are withholding a reelection endorsement for President Joe Biden until the union’s concerns about the auto industry’s transition to all-electric vehicles are addressed. UAW President Shawn Fain says the union wants a “just transition” for workers, as the government uses taxpayer money to subsidize the EV industry. This doesn’t mean the historically Democratic union is backing a Republican. In the Tuesday letter, Fain also noted “another Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster.”
Auto workers union and Sanders blast GM for wages at U.S. battery plant
May 2, 2023 // United Auto Workers (UAW) union President Shawn Fain and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday criticized a General Motors joint venture battery plant for paying workers much less than assembly plant employees even though it benefits from hefty U.S. government tax credits. Workers at the Warren, Ohio, joint venture Ultium Cells LLC plant start at $16.50 an hour rising to $20 an hour after seven years while union workers at a nearby Ohio GM assembly plant that closed in 2019 made $32 an hour or more.
New UAW Leader Already Has Issues With Detroit Automakers
April 25, 2023 // Speaking to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit, Fain said members are demanding that the union win back cost-of-living pay raises and pensions they lost, and the elimination of tiers of workers who are paid differently but do the same jobs. They also want assurances that good-paying union jobs will be preserved as the companies transition from gasoline-powered vehicles to those that run on electricity. Auto companies, he said, have made billions over the last decade but workers haven’t gotten their fair share since the companies got into financial trouble in 2009. “I want to work with the companies. I want to have a good relationship,” Fain said. “But if they’re not going to treat our members with respect and not give them their due, then we’re going to have issues.”
GM and LG Energy Solution Give Up on Fourth Joint Battery Plant in the U.S.
January 23, 2023 // GM already has one Ultium plant working in Lordstown, Ohio, and is building two others with LGES: one in Michigan and the other in Tennessee. When the United Auto Workers (UAW) decided to organize the Lordstown plant, the automaker was willing to accept a “card check” process, which would only depend on more than half of the workers wanting to unionize. LGES has one more person on Ultium’s board and refused to follow this faster process. That forced an election process that UAW won anyway. In other words, Ultium only wasted time with something the South Korean supplier may have believed it could avoid.
Workers at new GM joint venture EV battery plant vote to join union
December 12, 2022 // Barra said Thursday that UAW representation at the Ultium Cells plants does not automatically mean the joint venture faces a cost disadvantage against nonunion competitors. But she said, "We've got to be competitive. We don't have a right to exist. We've got to be competitive to have a company and go forward. We have that conversation with employees on the floor and they get it."