Kokomo's new battery plant at center of UAW fight
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
While state and local officials last week celebrated the arrival of a second electric vehicle battery plant in Kokomo, the jobs it will create are at the center of the United Auto Workers' fight with Detroit's Big Three automakers.
Driving the news: Automaker Stellantis and battery manufacturer Samsung SDI said they'll invest $3.2 billion to build the second plant, creating up to 1,400 jobs.
- The partners' first facility — also intended to create 1,400 jobs in Kokomo — is under construction and slated to start production in 2025.
Yes, but: The thousands of jobs forecasted for those two facilities are not part of the UAW.
- "The battery plant that's going up there is great for this community," said Garry Quirk, president of UAW Local 685 in Kokomo, at a rally last month. "However, that's got to be under the UAW umbrella. If we don't make that under the UAW umbrella, we have no place to go."
Catch up fast: The UAW has been striking Ford, GM and Stellantis for more than a month.
- While pay, hours and benefits are the headlines in contract negotiations, the auto industry's transition to EVs is also a major sticking point.
- As the companies make more EVs, jobs will transition out of manufacturing facilities where traditional combustion engines are made — like those in Kokomo that are part of the UAW master agreement — and into battery plants.
Zoom in: More than 13,000 Hoosiers work in UAW plants.
- Stellantis employs more than 7,000 people in Indiana between five plants in Kokomo and Tipton.
- GM employs more than 6,000 Hoosiers at five facilities — most of them at their Fort Wayne assembly plant in Roanoke.
What they're saying: Workers at the Kokomo plants criticized state and local officials for handing out record-setting incentives packages with millions of dollars in tax credits, training grants and performance payments to land the EV projects.
- "It's at my back door," said Dave Willis, president of UAW Local 1166, teeth gritted with anger during last month's rally. "And it's not under the master agreement."
- Willis said no one with the UAW was informed about the first plant until the night before the public announcement, a move he said was "wrong."
- "Those are 1,400 subpar-paying jobs," he said.
The latest: Earlier this month, GM agreed to unionize EV battery plants — a big win for the UAW.
- Stellantis and Ford have not made the same concession.
- The Associated Press reports that the automakers have said the plants, mostly joint ventures with South Korean battery makers, had to be bargained separately.