Last week, 1,000+ GM workers at Spring Hill, Tennessee, joint venture battery plant Ultium Cells LLC, unionized by card check. Big Three negotiations included the agreement that if they unionized, unionized GM battery plant workers would be folded into the automaker's UAW master contract.
This Spring Hill plant is the second GM EV plant to unionize and a bragging point for Shawn Fain during his quest to organize Southern auto workers by investing $40 million, targeting 150,000 workers at non-union plants. Thus far, the union has won votes at Chattanooga's Volkswagen assembly plant and lost at Mercedes in Alabama. The Spring Hill win, however, brings the UAW's efforts into new EV territory.
The UAW's main selling point on this win is that GM will immediately raise EV workers' starting pay from $20 to $27.72 per hour. It doesn't take a giant leap of logic to realize that substantial raise boosts could lead to efforts to reduce expenses in an industry that, depending on who you ask, isn't exactly sailing smoothly.
Are EV sales in trouble? Goldman Sachs believes that the market cannot sustain current EV prices, and automakers cannot afford to lower them. Bloomberg sees this as "a blip," as evidenced by flat sales and far less growth than expected. So, the EV market "is not collapsing," but companies face certain financial realities. Outside challenges also exist with EVs, including the U.S. infrastructure's lack of public fast chargers, although several manufacturers want to fix that issue with a joint venture.
Are fewer workers needed to build EVs even in the best of times? Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted EV plants need 30-40% fewer workers than traditional assembly plants. This figure hasn't existed long enough to be proven or disproven. Still, it's understood that the higher cost of EVs is due to parts like lithium-ion batteries. EV manufacturers will have to control costs elsewhere, including wages, to turn a profit.
The UAW and Biden have other plans: One of the more telltale signs of the Biden administration's deeply entrenched union support is the Inflation Reduction Act, which designated billions of dollars to construct EV facilities while requiring employers to stay union-neutral. As a result, optimistic Big Labor proponents touted "tens of thousands" of new union jobs "in the near future" across the so-called "battery belt." That includes the Spring Hills plant, one of two Ultium Cells plants, expected to employ 1,700 workers after receiving $2.6 billion for construction. Handing out 40%+ raises to these workers, however, is not sustainable in today's market.
EV job losses have already happened: In June, GM's Brownstone Battery plant announced layoffs involving half of the plant's 183 jobs, and rank-and-file critics claimed that Fain knew these cuts were coming during Big Three negotiations. Fain has aired his displeasure with layoffs at Stellantis. However, as we've discussed, unions cannot protect workers from layoffs, and Fain seems content to lie through his teeth to gain more union members despite the consequences to workers.
Shawn Fain, of course, is quick to blame layoffs on "corporate greed," although the more accurate claim is that "union greed" will essentially force automakers into precarious positions that could backfire on workers.
