Battery workers are autoworkers: Kentucky BlueOval SK workers launch union drive

Photo via UAW

GLENDALE, KY.—“We’re the workers that build batteries for Ford, and just like Ford workers, we are standing up for good, safe union jobs,” the newly organized battery workers said in a new video released by the United Auto Workers. This week, they announced a union drive at BlueOval SK (BOSK) in Kentucky.

The UAW announced that a supermajority of workers have signed union authorization cards and are now starting their public campaign to organize the battery plant here. “Battery workers are autoworkers,” they said, and “deserve the good, safe jobs that organizing with a union provides.”

The campaign launch at BOSK, which is a joint effort between Ford Motor Company and SK On, represents a significant breakthrough for electric vehicle (EV) battery workers organizing unions with the UAW.

BOSK is currently a non-union plant with weaker pay, benefits, and safety standards for its workers compared to union workers at Ford. The starting pay for a BOSK production worker is $21 per hour, while UAW production workers at Ford start at $26.32, and after three years will make over $42 an hour, the union said.

“Doesn’t have to be this way”

“Right up the road, Ford workers in Louisville,” members of UAW Local 862 at the Kentucky Truck Plant, “stood together and won a record contract with life-changing raises, world class healthcare, and the right to a safe job,” the workers said in the campaign launch video. “Now here at BOSK, we’re joining together to win our union and to make sure every worker’s voice is heard.

“From production to quality, from maintenance to material handling, together we are building a new industry from the ground up. We won’t let anybody grind us down. We’re building a better future as United Auto Workers.”

The UAW just launched a website dedicated to the union drive where workers at BOSK are sharing their stories on why they support the organizing campaign.

Bill Wilmoth, a production-formation worker at BOSK, said he and his fellow workers are severely unpaid and “we now have to pay more and receive less with our insurance. We have no say in any aspect of our work life, BOSK makes all the rules and they change things over and over to benefit themselves.”

For Robert Collett, who works in production-formation, it’s all about safety. He used to work at a union shop before starting at BOSK, and now he wants to organize with the UAW so that they can establish a safety committee on the shop floor.

“If we had an unsafe area, our union representatives would come out and if it was deemed unsafe, we wouldn’t work until it was taken care of,” he said. “Here at BOSK, we don’t have that protection and it’s dangerous. I’ve been hurt here at work. I am working to form a union because it would give us workers a voice. We are the ones that are going to do it best.”

In the wake of the Stand-Up Strike against the Big 3 last year, over 10,000 autoworkers at 13 non-union companies have registered with the UAW by signing union cards. Workers in the South, like everywhere else, are fed up with corporate greed and deteriorating working conditions. They are supplying the organizing momentum for better wages, benefits, and job rights in the automotive industry.

Worker organizing in the new “Battery Belt” is developing across the region. With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, corporations have announced investments of $110 billion in facilities for the EV supply and production chain.

This will include charging stations, mineral refining, and battery production, storage, and disposal. It’s estimated that 90,000 new jobs will come with these investments. 85% percent of these new investments are concentrated in right-to-work states and as many as two-thirds of all EV jobs are projected to eventually be located in the South.

Earlier this year, the union announced a massive, two year $40 million investment in new organizing. Non-union plants at companies such as BMW, Hyundai, Mercedes, Toyota, and Nissan have been targeted. Recent union victories in Tennessee, at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga and Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, led to over 5,000 workers joining the UAW.

Hazardous working conditions coupled with low-wages show that the standards at battery cell production plants must be raised, especially since these plants are getting billions of dollars in taxpayer funding, the union said.

Andrew McLean, who works under the formation–Logistics department at BOSK, said that he has worked both union and non-union jobs, and has seen the transformative power of unions firsthand. “At BOSK we don’t have a say in anything they do, we are at the mercy of the company. With a union, we would have a voice and be on a level playing field with management,” he said.

“With the protection of a union contract, BOSK won’t be able to take things away like they have done in the past,” said Amy Scheidemantel of the production–formation department. “I was promised all kinds of things when I started such as free insurance. Two weeks after I started, they announced they were going to take it away. I want to have a voice that is heard and valued; We will have that by coming together to form our union.”

“My dad told me something that stuck with me,” said Emily Drueke, a Quality–SQM/IQC process worker. “A union is only as strong as its weakest members and I feel that here at BOSK we are some of the best and qualified workers I have seen, so I know our union will be strong.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Cameron Harrison

Cameron Harrison is a trade union activist and organizer for the CPUSA Labor Commission. Based in Detroit, he was a grocery worker and member of UFCW Local 876 where he was a shop steward. He also works as a Labor Education Coordinator for the People Before Profits Education Fund, assisting labor organizations and collectives with education, organizing strategy and tactics, labor journalism, and trade union support.