Ultium workers at Ohio plant vote to push for union representation

Workers at the Ultium Cells LLC plant in northeast Ohio have authorized a strike in a bid to get the company to recognize the United Auto Workers union as their bargaining agent. 

On Friday, 94% of voting workers at the General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solution joint venture plant approved the strike recognition measure, UAW Local 1112 President Darwin Cooper told The Detroit News. There is no deadline for the strike to occur, he added. 

Experts say the UAW will use the vote as leverage at the table in its effort to get the company to recognize the union. But Ultium said in a statement it is pushing for an election certified by the National Labor Relations Board, which experts say the UAW would like to avoid since it elongates the process. 

As of August, the plant had 800 hourly and salaried workers. At full production, the facility is expected to have 1,300 employees.

Organizing the Ultium Cells battery cell manufacturing operation in Warren, Ohio, where production started last month, is critical for the UAW as the industry transitions to electric vehicles, requiring new jobs like the ones at Ultium. The Warren plant is one of four U.S. plants the GM/LG joint venture will open. 

A UAW spokesperson did not respond to several requests for comment on the situation in Warren. 

Ultium spokesperson Brooke Waid said in a statement that the company "respects workers’ right to unionize and the efforts of the UAW or any other union to organize battery cell manufacturing workers at our manufacturing sites. Ultium Cells has every intention of complying with the National Labor Relations Act, which protects our employees’ right to decide the issue of union representation through a voluntary democratic election conducted by the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board)."

The union is "gearing up" to tell the employer it "could engage in a recognitional strike and recognitional picketing for a lawful period of 30 days before they have to file a petition for election with the NLRB," explained Mark Gaston Pearce, a visiting professor and the executive director of the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He is a former board member and chairman of the National Labor Relations Board who was appointed by President Barack Obama. 

If an employer wants to push for an election, the UAW can lawfully "hit the brakes" for 30 days before it files a petition for election, which could give the union an advantage in negotiations with the company.

"What the union is doing is playing its leverage before it has to file a petition with the board because the union knows that it could cause a challenge to the employer by either being on the precipice of a strike or actually striking," Pearce said. 

"It's old school and a lot of unions don't do that anymore because they don't have that kind of influence over a new bargaining unit. Apparently, this union does and if the bargaining unit truly has voted in that percentile to recognition strike, then the union has that kind of leverage."

In a September newsletter to members obtained by The Detroit News, UAW Region 2B Director Wayne Blanchard wrote that UAW organizers have been on the ground for a few months in the northeast Ohio town where General Motors and the UAW had a strong presence for more than 50 years at the former Lordstown Assembly Plant. The thousands of workers once employed at GM Lordstown were members of UAW Local 1112. 

"There has been an overwhelming show of interest in organizing from the people working at this facility," Blanchard wrote. "They are adamant that they want a union at Ultium and that the UAW is their choice."

The UAW began trying to organize the plant months before production launched in Warren. In May, UAW Vice President Terry Dittes, director of the GM department for the union, wrote to local leaders about difficulties the union faced in trying to establish a card-check agreement with Ultium Cells.  

There are two ways for employees to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act. Employees can sign authorization cards and when 30% or more are signed, they can go to the NLRB and file a petition for an election, explained Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab.

For the employer to voluntarily recognize the employees’ choice for a union, more than 50% would have to sign a card in support of union representation. 

Voluntary recognition "makes it for a nice process and transition, and shows the world that the parties are not starting out on a hostile playing field," Creighton said in a statement. 

She added: "The fact that 94% said they would vote to strike is a huge number and indicates that the employees are saying to the employer that they fully support the union and don’t want to go through an anti-union campaign."

Pushing for an election could give the company more time to run an anti-union campaign, experts say. 

"They want to make it harder for unions to organize," said Marick Masters, a professor at Wayne State University's Mike Ilitch School of Business. "You're going to have to work for every penny you earn."

khall@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @bykaleahall