About 1,000 workers at a General Motors electric vehicle battery joint venture in Spring Hill, Tennessee, are now getting a big pay raise after they joined the United Auto Workers union
DETROIT– About 1,000 workers at a General Motors electric vehicle battery joint venture in Spring Hill, Tennessee, are getting a big pay raise after they join the United Auto Workers union.
GM and Korea-based LG Energy Solution, which jointly operate the plant, agreed to recognize the union after a majority of workers signed cards indicating their intention to join, the UAW said Wednesday.
Both sides will negotiate local contract terms, but workers’ pay and other details will be governed by the UAW’s national contract negotiated last fall, the union said in a prepared statement. The $20 an hour starting salary will rise to a minimum of $27.72. Over three years, the minimum wage for production workers will rise to $30.88, the contract says.
The joint venture, Ultium Cells LLC, said in a news release that the union recognition came after an independently certified process that ended Tuesday. “We believe this partnership will support continuity of operations, drive innovation and enhance world-class manufacturing,” the news release said.
The battery plant representation gives the UAW a new foothold in the southern U.S. states as it tries to organize non-union auto plants. Workers at a 4,300-employee Volkswagen plant assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennesseevoted to join the union in April and contract negotiations are expected to begin this month.
But the union lost her first organizational election in May at a Mercedes assembly plant and other facilities near Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Spring Hill is the second GM joint venture battery plant to unionize and fall under the national contract. Workers at a plant near Warren, Ohio, voted in 2022 to unionize.
Earlier this year, battery cell production began in Spring Hill.