Workers at General Motors joint venture battery plant in Tennessee unionize and will get pay raise

About 1,000 workers at a General Motors joint venture electric vehicle battery plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will get big pay raises now that they have joined the United Auto Workers union.

GM and LG Energy Solution of Korea, which jointly run the plant, agreed to recognize the union after a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted to join, the UAW said Wednesday.

Both sides will bargain over local contract provisions, but worker pay and other details will fall under the UAW national contract negotiated last fall, the union said in a prepared statement. Starting pay which was $20 per hour will rise to a minimum of $27.72. Over three years, minimum production worker pay will rise to $30.88, the contract says.

The joint venture, Ultium Cells LLC, said in a release that the union recognition came after an independently certified process that ended Tuesday. “We believe this partnership will support the continuity of operations, drive innovation, and enhance world-class manufacturing,” the release said.

Representation of the battery plant gives the UAW another foothold in U.S. southern states as it tries to organize nonunion auto plants. Workers at a 4,300-employee Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted in April to join the union, and contract bargaining is expected to begin this month.

But the union lost its first organizing vote in May at a Mercedes assembly plant and other facilities near Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Spring Hill is the second GM joint venture battery plant to join the union and fall under the national contract. Workers at a plant near Warren, Ohio, voted to join the union in 2022.

Battery cell production began in Spring Hill earlier this year.