Few would question Biden’s claim of being the “most pro-union president in U.S. history.” That mission has long since been accomplished, and long-lasting effects include sweeping legislation that ties funding and tax incentives to requiring friendly company stances towards unions. Continuing their approach of leveraging government purse strings, the administration’s substantial investment in EV plants in the so-called “Battery Belt” is opening up a wealth of new union targets.
Construction on a crush of new EV battery plants went into overdrive after Biden’s 2022 agenda detailed investments from automakers, which were set to receive tax credits and subsidies via linked legislation. This frenzy—which will eventually result in enormous EV plants scattered throughout the region—will increase domestic battery supply and pump manufacturing jobs into the area, which the Biden team hopes will quickly become union jobs.
Geographically speaking, the Battery Belt is predominately located in the Southern US, thereby shifting auto manufacturing focus from Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio to Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. The South also happens to be where Shawn Fain holds the “moon shot” goal to double the UAW’s current size and restore it to glory-days numbers. And inevitably, the rush of new manufacturing jobs into the South means that other unions are also sniffing around for points of vulnerability.
The attractiveness of these targets cannot be overstated. Within the next few years, 5,100 jobs will reportedly be created at the Toyota Battery plant in Liberty, North Carolina, with 4,000 more at Volkswagen's Scout Motors plant in Columbia, South Carolina. Other job opportunities will surface in mineral refining and mining, where domestic lithium sources are discovered. Those areas include a North Carolina lake that will be drained to reopen an “open-pit lithium mine. All told, 70,000+ manufacturing jobs could eventually be created within the Battery Belt.
It’s no wonder the left-leaning publication Labor Notes is hailing a new “organizing front” in the South, where many towns will draw an influx of workers who will vastly outnumber the residents.
To that end, the Action Network fundraising platform is drumming up southern EV workers' interest in future organizing campaigns. In mid-August, the group hosts a virtual event where workers from the Chattanooga, Tennessee VW plant “will share testimony” about their union experience. Their union vote took place in April; no contract has been seen yet. The UAW hasn’t yet had enough time to disappoint them, although the data that Fain doesn’t want workers to see proves that he is wrong about union jobs being higher-paid jobs.
Still, GM’s Ultium Cells factory in Lordstown, Ohio, unionized in 2022 and recently ratified a new contract, which the union claims will be a blueprint for other EV plants, which could eventually be observed in the Battery Belt’s plants under construction. Georgia's Blue Bird plant, which manufactures EV buses, also saw workers unionize in 2023 with the USW, and this year, workers at Alabama’s New Flyer EV bus plant joined the Industrial Division of the Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA).
The stakes are high, but in the Battery Belt, as everywhere else, employers must create workplaces where workers will not feel the need to turn to third-party representation when—not if—unions come knocking.
