The United Automobile Workers union on Monday announced a temporary contract at an Ohio factory that makes batteries for electric vehicles, a step it called a milestone in strengthening wages and safety in the EV supply chain.
The deal covers 1,600 workers at a Lordstown plant operated by Ultium Cells, a joint venture between General Motors and a South Korean partner, LG Energy Solution. Produces batteries for GM electric vehicles.
The workers were not unionized when the plant opened in 2022, but were brought into the UAW under the terms of the national contract the union negotiated with GM last fall. This new contract, subject to ratification by factory workers, sets site-specific wages and working conditions.
Shawn Fain, the UAW president, said in a letter to union members that the deal was “a game changer for the electric vehicle battery industry.”
GM said in a statement that it was pleased with the deal.
The union said it planned to use the Ultium Cells contract as a model as it negotiated local agreements at other battery plants built by GM and its rivals in Detroit. GM started production this year at a battery plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., and has another under construction in Lansing, Mich.
Ford Motor plans two battery plants in Kentucky, one in Tennessee and one in Michigan. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles, plans two battery plants in Indiana. Except for one Ford site, those plants include joint ventures brought under the UAW umbrella under the national contracts the union signed with Ford and Stellantis last fall.
The Ultium Cells contract calls for moving workers to a new wage of $30.50 an hour. In three years, wages will rise to $35 an hour. The national contract signed last fall had raised the starting wage at Ultium Cells to $26.91, up from $16.50 an hour when the plant opened.
That wage scale is slightly smaller than that at GM’s auto plants, where most workers will move to a top wage of more than $40 an hour in the coming years.
The Ultium Cells contract also requires the plant to employ four UAW members as full-time safety representatives and one full-time industrial hygienist. The union and Ultium workers have raised concerns about working with high-voltage electricity and potentially harmful compounds used in the production of EV batteries.
The Ohio plant is particularly significant because it is located next to GM’s shuttered Lordstown auto plant, which once employed many thousands of workers.
After GM permanently closed the Lordstown plant in 2019, the company was criticized by President Donald J. Trump and the plight of the laid-off workers was invoked in the 2020 election campaign.
Separately, the UAW said about 200 workers who once worked at the Lordstown plant and had taken jobs at other GM locations will soon be transferred to the Ultium Cells plant so they can return to the area. About 40 workers will start working there next week, followed by other groups of about 40 in the coming weeks, a union spokesman said.
