GM battery joint venture recognizes UAW at Tennessee plant

The United Auto Workers said Wednesday that a battery production joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution has agreed to recognize the union at a plant in Tennessee.

The UAW said a majority of workers at the Ultium Cells plant signed their UAW membership petition and the company agreed to recognize their union after workers at an Ultium plant in Ohio voted overwhelmingly to join the union in 2022 and won a new collective bargaining agreement with significant wage increases earlier this year.

The Tennessee plant employs 1,000 people and produces batteries for GM's electric vehicles built at a nearby assembly plant, including the Cadillac Lyriq.

“The Ultium Cells team in Tennessee has expressed its desire to be represented by the UAW. The parties will now enter the local negotiation process,” a GM spokesman said.

LG representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

GM's battery production was a point of contention in the UAW's collective bargaining negotiations last year, during which the union went on strike for six weeks at the three major automakers' plants.

The automaker finally agreed to subject its Ultium battery factories to the union's collective bargaining agreement once the majority of workers vote to form a union.

UAW President Shawn Fain is leading a $40 million nationwide organizing campaign targeting major automakers like Toyota and Tesla.

In April, the union at Volkswagen scored a victory when 73 percent of eligible workers at a plant in Tennessee voted to join the UAW. This made the plant the first auto plant in the South since the 1940s to organize the union by ballot.

Weeks after the victory, workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama voted against joining the union. The UAW said earlier this year that more than 30 percent of workers at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota auto parts plant in Missouri had signed cards declaring their desire to join the UAW.

The union's executive board recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in her presidential bid, stressing that the Democrat is more supportive of workers than Republican former President Donald Trump. Fain and Trump have exchanged heated insults in recent months: Fain called the former president a “strikebreaker” and Trump called for Fain's firing.

The support of the next government could support ongoing union organizing efforts, but is probably not decisive, labor experts say.

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  Reuters

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