Nashville, Tennessee (AP) — Ford’s blockbuster announcement this week that it will build four large new factories in Kentucky and Tennessee and employ nearly 11,000 workers raises big unanswered questions. Did.
Neither Ford, the United Auto Workers, or the future employers themselves, yet know how much money will be paid to workers or whether to vote for members.
The three plants, which will be built in collaboration with Ford’s Korean partner SK Innovation, will produce one million batteries for electric vehicles annually. The fourth is the next-generation electric F-series pickup truck, the best-selling car version in the United States.
The new plant represents Ford’s $ 11.4 billion bet on its future vision of tens of millions of drivers moving from polluting internal combustion engines to electric vehicles that emit nothing from tailpipes.
Expecting to secure battery factory union members to replace the work lost in the event of a transition to electric vehicles, as Ford employees as well as Ford and others envision. The danger is also great for the UAW. Trade union workers are generally paid an average of 20% higher wages than non-union workers, usually receive more generous benefits, and express greater views on factory safety and other workplace rules. To do.
On Monday when Ford’s plans were announced, CEO Jim Farley stopped publicly supporting the UAW and only said that union representatives at the factory would be decided by the workers themselves. In Kentucky and Tennessee, where trade unions are often shunned by workers and opposed by political leaders, UAW representation is not guaranteed.
On Wednesday, Ford said it hopes to continue its “strong and mutually beneficial” relationship with the UAW.
“We respect UAW’s efforts to organize future hourly workers at new facilities in Tennessee and Kentucky,” Ford and SK said in a statement.
According to experts, Ford may be trying to appease politicians who were against union organization by stopping explicit support for union members at the new factory. Dan Cornfield, who teaches sociology and political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said political leaders in both states still have to approve funding for worker training and other incentives for Ford. Instead, the company said it didn’t want to jeopardize its support.
“The company is between union partners and state government partners in this regard,” said Cornfield. “So they probably don’t talk about unionization in any way because they don’t want to be hostile to their longtime partners.”
Not to mention President Land Cruiser Joe Biden, who has frequently promoted the industry-wide transition to electric vehicles as an important way to combat climate change and create “high-paying union employment”.
A letter attached to Ford’s domestic contract with the UAW promises that the company will remain neutral as the union attempts to organize a new factory. It would agree with a “card check” sign-up effort that would allow the union to recruit workers to sign the card saying they want to be represented. When 51% of the workers sign on, the factory becomes a union.
In general, it is the preferred method of union organizing plants. However, in southern states, card checking does not mean an automated union factory. Kentucky and Tennessee have “labor rights” laws that prohibit companies from signing transactions that force workers to pay dues.
Especially in Tennessee, political leaders, including Republican Governor Bill Lee, fought the UAW at the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, which recently lost an organization vote for the entire factory. For the state to recruit other manufacturers.
“It’s more difficult to attract businesses to states with a high level of organized union activity,” Lee said prior to the 2019 vote at VW. “Therefore, I think it would be beneficial for Tennessee’s economy to keep Volkswagen a merit shop facility.”
It is difficult at present, but it is not impossible to organize a union in the south. The UAW has already represented nearly 16,000 hourly workers at its two Ford plants in Louisville and the General Motors complex in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
UAW President Ray Curry, who attended the Tennessee ceremony this week, said he didn’t think Ford chose sites in Stanton, Tennessee and Glendale, Kentucky to avoid the UAW. He was optimistic about the organization of the new factory.
“We have a long-term partnership with Ford,” Curry said. “It’s a great opportunity to continue that relationship.”
Todddan, president of the UAW local office in Louisville, also seemed hopeful. He said this week’s statement by Ford CEO Farley was seen as a warning in a politically harsh environment.
I think it might be that they are saying, “Hey, in the state of labor rights, we’re going to make sure they (workers) have their choices.” “”
According to Dan, the union will campaign with a promise of better wages and benefits, advocacy for health and safety, and a louder voice for workers.
Stanton, Tennessee’s new Ford site is located in the countryside of Haywood County, about 50 miles east of Memphis, one of the few counties to vote for Biden in the 2020 elections. This is a good sign for union organizations, according to Vanderbilt’s Cornfield. The union has historically been successful in the South, he said, when organizing branch operations for companies from the North that they have already joined the union.
“On the other hand, the political situation in the South from a government perspective is Republican and tends to oppose unionization,” Cornfield said.
Tennessee’s “right-to-work” law has existed for over 70 years. Republican state legislators have already established a question on the 2022 ballot asking whether the law should be enshrined in the Tennessee Constitution, further complicating Ford’s conversation.
So far, Republican US Senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn haven’t openly opposed the union at the Ford facility, a few years after its opening. But both emphasized the state’s right-to-work law, and Mr. Hagati hoped that future workers deciding whether to form a union would “keep in mind Tennessee’s business, competition and workers’ policies.” He said he was.
Ford’s plants have the potential to raise the standard of living for people in and around Haywood County. Workers at the union’s car assembly plant earn an average of about $ 32 an hour, compared to a national average car manufacturing wage of $ 25. But in Tennessee, automakers pay an average of only $ 19 an hour, Cornfield said.
Automobile companies generally want to pay less at factories that manufacture parts such as batteries than they assemble cars. However, the UAW seeks assembly plant wages at these facilities.
It may be easy for unions to organize in Kentucky. Kentucky is a bright red state, but there are Democratic governors who support the UAW. Kentucky University’s professor of economics, Kenneth Trosk, said Glendale is about 50 miles south of Louisville and is the home of the state’s only union with teachers.
The state has a history of coal mining and automobile production unions, and most recently passed the “Right-to-work” law in 2017.
But it voted firmly for the recent Republicans. And the huge Toyota factory in the central part of the state remains unionized.
“We used to be a pretty strong parent union nation,” Torosuke said. “That has certainly changed. We are Republicans. We are now as red as red.”
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Krisher reported from Detroit and Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press writer Adrian Signs contributed from Stanton, Tennessee.
Union work? Ford’s new EV plant plans raise questions | WGN Radio 720
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