Tennessee Ultium EV battery plant joins UAW union

A majority of workers at Ultium Cells battery plant in Spring Hill signed cards to join the United Auto Workers, and the company agreed Wednesday to recognize the union without a vote.

Ultium, a joint venture of General Motors and the Korean company LG Entergy Solution, produces battery cells for electric vehicles. The plant has 1,000 employees.

"The unionization of Ultium is important for the UAW because union leaders want to make sure that the heads of the big three domestic producers do not use the transition to electric vehicles to move away from UAW representation at all of their production facilities," said Stephen J. Silva, an economist at American University.

UAW officials confirmed that the automatic acceptance of the union was a term GM agreed to specifically for its Ultium battery joint ventures.

The Ultium Cells 2.8 million-square-foot plant, which cost $2.6 billion and took two and half years to build, delivered its first lithium-ion battery cells to GM in March. The batteries are currently used in GM's all-electric Cadillac LYRIQ.

The U.S. Department of Energy gave Ultium a $2.5 billion loan to build its plants in Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee.

The Ultium plant in Ohio voted to join the UAW in 2022 and won a new contract this summer.

In 2023, the UAW won favorable new contracts after striking against GM and the other two major U.S. automakers, Ford and Stellantis. At that time, GM agreed to accept a union without an election at its Ultium plants if a majority of workers asked join one. Most U.S. companies today insist on a federally monitored election even if a majority of their workers sign cards to join a union.

After the strike, the UAW turned its attention to the South, where unions have historically been weak. The results have been mixed.

In April, nearly three-quarters of the workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga voted to join the UAW. In May, however, the UAW lost a vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama , even though a majority of workers there had signed cards to join the union.

Car manufactures, both foreign and domestic, have built more plants across the South in recent years. The companies have been lured to region by lucrative incentives and lower rates of unionization. The region has been dubbed the "battery belt," because many automakers are building EVs and hybrid vehicles in the region.

Electric vehicles have been seen as the future of the automative industry, although in recent months questions have been raised about automakers commitments to EVs. This summer, GM backed off its forecast of that it would have one million units of electric vehicle production capacity in the U.S. by 2025. Ford announced last month that it would scrap a proposed all-electric SUV and delay the launch of an EV version of its popular F-150 truck due to a lack of consumer demand.

The EV version of the F-150 will be produced at Ford's new BlueOval plant near Memphis. Originally, Ford planned to begin production of the truck in 2025, but now production on the truck will not start until 2027.

Reuters and Melonee Hunt contributed reporting to this story.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Ultium EV battery plant joins UAW union