'A Great Day': Workers at Second Southern Auto Industry Plant Join UAW

"The new jobs of the South will be union jobs," said Tim Smith, a regional director for the United Auto Workers, after the union announced Tuesday that 1,000 workers at Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee had voted to form a collective bargaining unit.

The vote made the electric vehicle battery plant the second Ultium Cells workplace to join the UAW, and the second auto industry plant in the U.S. South to vote in favor of unionization following the launch of a major $40 million organizing effort in the region this year.

Anti-union companies such as EV automaker Tesla have eyed the South as a region to make a manufacturing push, due to its historical antagonism toward labor and low levels of unionization.

But Smith said the vote at Ultium Cells proves that "in the battery plants and EV factories springing up from Georgia to Kentucky to Texas, workers know they deserve the same strong pay and benefits our members have won. And we're going to make sure they have the support they need to win their unions and win their fair share."

The first Ultium Cells battery plant to join the UAW was the Lordstown, Ohio location, where employees ratified a contract in June that included a 30% raise over three years for production workers, an immediate $3,000 bonus, and health and safety protections.

"Being unionized will help us reap the benefits as far as better healthcare, better pay, and overall, just having decency within the workplace—not just for us, but future generations," said Tradistine Chambers, a worker at Ultium in Spring Hill.

General Motors, which jointly owns Ultium Cells with South Korean company LG Energy Solution, voluntarily recognized the new union on Tuesday.

"The workers organized without facing threats or intimidation and won their union once a majority of workers signed cards," said the UAW.

Trudy Lindahl, a worker at the plant, said it was "a great day for Ultium workers and for every worker in Tennessee and the South."

"Southern workers are ready to stand up and win our fair share by winning our unions," said Lindahl. "And when we have a free and fair choice, we will win every time."

Two months after the UAW launched its organizing drive in the South, workers at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee overwhelmingly voted to join the union. A vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama in May failed even though a majority of workers had signed union cards, and the UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board that the automaker had launched a union-busting campaign.

Despite that setback in Alabama, organizer Keith Brower Brown of Labor Notes said the union in Spring Hill could serve as "a potential union anchor for massive factories under construction for the emerging Southern battery belt."

Tens of thousands of new EV battery jobs are expected to come online across the South in the coming months, including at plants owned by Ford in Tennessee and Kentucky.