The United Auto Workers’ contract talks with Ultium Cells, General Motors’ joint venture for electric vehicle batteries, could take as long as a year as the union also attempts to hammer out a new national four-year agreement with the big three U.S. automakers, according to a union official.
Six months after workers at the Ultium plant in Lordstown, Ohio, became the first at a U.S. battery gigafactory to organize, they have become the spearpoint of a UAW strategy to fold all nine U.S. battery gigafactories planned by GM, Ford and Stellantis into the new national agreement. None of the eight other plants is organized.
The Lordstown talks have attracted outsize attention because they are likely to set a pattern for how the automakers will treat all the battery gigafactories. The gigafactories themselves have assumed geopolitical significance as the U.S. attempts to compete with the Chinese battery makers that dominate the industry. The union estimates that the Lordstown factory alone will receive about $1 billion a year in subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act.
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