A Thousand Tennessee Autoworkers Just Joined the UAW

This week, in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, roughly one thousand workers at Ultium Cells LLC, an electric vehicle (EV) plant jointly run by General Motors and LG Energy Solution of Korea, joined the United Auto Workers (UAW) after a majority of the venture’s employees signed union-authorization cards. The advance is a product of the pathway to unionization won by the UAW during its historic strike against the Big Three automakers — GM, Ford, and Stellantis — last fall.

Autoworkers wanted to win an advance for their comrades in the largely nonunion EV sector. The union was legally constrained in its ability to bargain over the issue, given that it did not yet represent these workers. But with an eye to the speed at which the EV sector is expanding — tens of thousands of new battery jobs are slated to come online in the South in the near future, including at Ford’s Blue Oval plants in Tennessee and Kentucky — the UAW wrested an agreement from the Detroit automakers.

The pathway to unionization won in that fight allows EV workers to organize via what’s known as “card check,” rather than having to file for anNational Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election, with all the opportunities for union busting that accompanies that latter process. In his presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a federal law that would grant workers across the country the ability to unionize via card check. He reneged on that agreement, though calls for EFCA’s passage are now emerging in light of the obstacles facing current unionization drives at the likes of Starbucks. Without such a law, the process must be won through workers’ struggle, as the striking UAW members won it for Big Three EV workers.

Ultium’s Spring Hill workers are the first to make use of the newly won pathway. According to the union, Ultium did not interfere with their decision to join the UAW, and they…