EV plants emerge as flashpoint in fight between unions, Southern GOP

ATLANTA — Labor unions and southern Republicans have been at odds for years.

But the long-running feud is heating up as each side moves to claim a new — and lucrative — sector of the green economy: electric vehicles.

At stake is nothing less than money and power.

And not just for the companies and their employees. If labor unions are successful in making inroads across the South, the footholds could give Democrats a chance to better compete in a region that has been dominated for decades by Republicans.

“The people orchestrating these [labor] actions are partisan activists who want nothing more than to see the free market brought to a screeching halt,” said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) earlier this year.

Over the past nine months, labor unions have scored a series of high-profile victories in the South at facilities that manufacture EVs. The efforts have compelled at least three Southern states to pass new anti-union legislation.

The United Auto Workers in April won an organizing drive at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after a string of attempts dating back 10 years. The United Steelworkers in May won its own drive at a school bus plant in Macon, Georgia. And workers at a transit bus maker in Anniston, Alabama, ratified their first contract in May after joining the industrial division of the Communication Workers of America in January.

The unions say they’re bringing better wages and working conditions.

Stevie Joe Thornton, a steward in the union who helped negotiate the contract at the New Flyer bus plant in Alabama, said the agreement will provide him his first raise in nearly four years. He also got the right to confront his managers over routine headaches such as favoritism and uneven discipline.

“We’re equals,” he said. “You’re going to stop treating me like an adolescent.”

But the union drives have spurred a backlash from Southern governors and state legislatures. Republicans control most of the state governments in the Southeast, and the party for decades has fought organized labor.

Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee passed laws this year that would claw back billions of dollars in state economic incentives unless companies make it harder for unions to organize. And the United Auto Workers lost a high-profile election in May at a Mercedes plant in Alabama after local officials sounded off against it.

Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University who has written a book about automotive unions in the Southeast, said the opposition to organized labor is a matter of both raw politics and broader economic policy.

“Party politics certainly is a big factor explaining the response, but the other important factor is how the governors market their states to potential investors, especially foreign investors,” Silvia said. “Southern governors prefer being able to tell potential investors that they won’t have to worry about unions if they invest in their state.”

Kemp in particular has been in the spotlight because Georgia is such a closely watched swing state. The governor has vowed to keep Georgia a “right to work” state, and in April he was among six governors who issued a statement warning workers that joining unions could endanger their jobs.

“We want to keep good paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector here,” the statement said. “A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.”

White House race overhangs union politics

Democrats have long allied themselves with unions, in part because of organized labor’s ability to turn out voters. And the additional support can make a big difference in states such as Georgia, which in 2020 helped vault President Joe Biden to the White House.

Biden beat then-President Donald Trump that year in Georgia by about 11,000 votes. Union voters only make up 4 to 5 percent of Georgia’s workforce, but they turn out in bigger numbers, making up 9 to 10 percent of the electorate, according to the AFL-CIO.

The labor group is looking to repeat that success this year.

As early voting in Georgia started this month, the state’s AFL-CIO headquarters in Atlanta was abuzz with people working phones, eating takeout food and carrying campaign signs to cars in the packed parking lot. Rather than advertising or other top-down communication, the labor umbrella group was relying on a person-to-person drive to get its members to the polls.

“The more education we do, the more it swings,” Yvonne Brooks, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, said in an interview.

The Biden administration has made it a priority to boost workers and labor unions, and its signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, included provisions meant to encourage union organization at companies that receive grants and loans for manufacturing.

Biden also has touted a growth in new unions nationally under his watch, announcing this month that the National Labor Relations Board had approved a record number of new unions during his term.

“After the previous administration sided with big corporations to undermine workers — from blocking overtime pay protections to making it harder to organize — my Administration has supported workers,” Biden said, according to the Associated Press.

But it’s not clear if the attention has translated into unified union support for Vice President Kamala Harris in her run this year for the White House.

The Teamsters union declined to endorse a presidential candidate, although some of its local unions have backed Harris. The nonendorsement follows uneven support for Democrats from unions in recent presidential elections.

Union backing for Democrats dropped to 53.3 percent in the 2016 election, when Trump was elected, but bounced back to 60 percent in the 2020 presidential race and 62.6 percent in the 2022 midterms, according to the Center for American Progress.

On the campaign trail, Trump has positioned himself as a defender of blue-collar workers, even though his policies often have worked against their interests.

Neither of the presidential campaigns responded to requests for comment.

Republican leaders in Georgia and other Southern states also have tried to appeal to workers, despite passing anti-union legislation, said Ian Greer, a professor at Cornell University who studies labor issues.

“They’re still trying to keep unions out while sort of posturing like friends of the working class,” he said.

Foreign carmakers drawn to the South

Foreign carmakers began flocking to Southeastern states in the 1980s, attracted by cheap land, access to American markets and low labor costs compared to the rest of the country. Honda and Nissan pioneered the idea in the 1980s, and they were followed by German and Korean companies in the 1990s and 2000s.

Virtually all the new plants were built in so-called right-to-work states where local laws make it harder for unions to organize. BMW cited the region’s “work ethic” when it opened a plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1994.

Today, foreign carmakers build more vehicles in the U.S. than the Detroit giants, and the bulk of their production happens in nonunion plants. The growth of the car industry in the South coincided roughly with a huge decline in the UAW’s membership. It fell from 1.5 million to fewer than 400,000 from the 1980s to the 2020s.

The UAW, backed by the Biden administration, won a high-profile strike against the Detroit carmakers in 2023, earning higher wages and guarantees that it would be able to organize workers at battery plants.

Shortly after, the auto workers union announced a $40 million drive to organize workers at auto plants across the South.

Until this year, the UAW had been rebuffed every time it tried to organize workers in the South.

Auto plants in Southern states typically pay above-average wages for the region, and business leaders often cite the high wages to argue that the industry doesn’t need unions.

But working conditions are sometimes worse than at unionized plants. Children as young as 12 were found working at an Alabama company that makes parts for Hyundai Motor and Kia, according to a 2022 investigation by the Reuters news service. The U.S. Labor Department in May sued Hyundai and two other companies, but not Kia, over similar allegations.

Another parts supplier for Hyundai has used convict labor from the Alabama prison system, according to a lawsuit from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

A Hyundai spokesperson said the company took quick action after the child-labor allegations surfaced. It worked with its supplier to terminate the labor contract accused of supplying underage workers. Asked about the convict-labor allegations, the spokesperson said in an email, “we mandate that our suppliers and business partners strictly adhere to the law, and we take reports of alleged violations very seriously.”

The auto plants typically are located in rural areas and draw their workers from a network of small towns, which makes organizing hard, Silvia said. The companies also screen workers for union sympathies when they’re hired.

And when unions have tried to organize at the plants, they not only face company-funded lawyers and consultants, they’ve increasingly come up against politicians.

During one drive in 2019, managers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant allowed Republican Gov. Bill Lee to speak to employees.

The UAW won its election at the Volkswagen plant this year partly because the UAW worked with labor representatives at the company’s German headquarters to convince the company to remain neutral about the vote, Silvia said.

The Mercedes plant was a harder fight. Mercedes historically has paid higher wages than other plants in the South, and the company allowed anti-union speakers onto the plant floor ahead of the vote, Silvia said.

Unions across the country got a boost from provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that require companies receiving grants and to show they’ve provided benefits to the surrounding community — the Biden administration has said that union contracts qualify as proof of those benefits.

That helped the United Steelworkers win a contract after a two-year campaign at Blue Bird, a school bus maker headquartered in Macon, Georgia. The company got an $80 million grant from the Department of Energy to build a new electric bus plant near its existing factory, creating 400 new jobs in the process.

Blue Bird had used some of the union-fighting tactics seen at auto plants in the Southeast, warning workers that having a union would make it harder for the plant to operate and even firing one union supporter, said Maria Somma, an organizer for the steelworkers.

The federal funding helped level the playing field.

Before the company applied for the grant, both of Georgia’s U.S. senators, along with Rep. Sanford Bishop (D), wrote letters to Blue Bird asking the company to remain neutral in the union election.

“These letters were friendly and no one implied that Blue Bird would somehow lose funding over the organizing drive,” Somma said. “However, they still sent a powerful message: that the people who were representing them in D.C. were paying attention and encouraging them to behave within the law. That was something the management needed to hear.”

Georgia’s newest anti-union law would push companies to fight harder against union drives. It requires companies to hold a secret-ballot election before recognizing a new union, rather than simply allowing workers to fill out a card showing their preference. It also prevents companies from providing employees’ contact information to union organizers.

When he introduced the bill, Kemp said the UAW strike led to layoffs at Ford and other companies and vowed to prevent that from happening in Georgia.

“I want to be clear: In Georgia, we’re proud to be a right-to-work state,” Kemp said. “And we’re going to continue to stand for free enterprise, job creation, economic growth and pro-business policies as long as I’m governor.”

Georgia looms as new battlefield

While the unions haven’t announced any organizing drives at Georgia’s car plants, the state’s EV industry is a potential target. Georgia has received $18.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, much of it aimed at boosting EV battery production.

A Kemp spokesperson, Garrison Douglas, said the state’s commitment to pro-business policies was the real catalyst for the EV industries. Kemp underscored that argument in May when he visited Kia’s plant in West Point, Georgia, and drove the factory’s first EV off the assembly line.

“This expansion of Kia’s operations in our state and the addition of this incredible new product line to the vehicles already being built in West Point is just the latest example of what comes from state and local partners working with this valued job creator,” Kemp said at the time.

Kia employs 3,200 people at the West Point plant, and another 11,000 work at suppliers in the region. Hyundai, which is Kia’s corporate parent, plans to hire 8,500 workers at an EV plant near Savannah, Georgia. Both companies are partners in battery plants that are under construction.

At first glance, the Kia factory appears to be an unlikely battleground. It’s brightly lit and spotlessly clean. Automated machines stamp flat sheets of steel into body components and robotic arms that weld the pieces together. The bulk of the workforce works in the final assembly process, installing wiring, suspension, seats and other components.

Neither the Georgia law nor the Inflation Reduction Act’s pro-union provision will affect the plant, although EVs produced at the plant will qualify for tax incentives under the climate law, said James Bell, head of communications for Kia America. The plant produces four gas-powered cars on the same assembly line as its EVs, giving it flexibility to meet whatever consumers demand.

“IRA funding, we approach it purely from, how can it incentivize consumers to join us on this adventure towards electrification?” Bell said.

Steve Tramell, the mayor of West Point, said the Kia plant helped the town recover from an economic slump. It was once home to WestPoint Stevens, a major textile manufacturer, but the company moved its operations and later went bankrupt, laying off thousands of workers.

After the Kia plant went into production in 2009, restaurants and stores reopened in West Point’s downtown, and local residents picked up jobs at the plant, Tramell said. There’s a lack of housing in the area, and a lot of the plant’s workforce drives in from Alabama or from the Atlanta suburbs.

As for unions, Tramell said, “I just don’t know there’d be a benefit.”

Mickey Thornton, who works at the New Flyer bus plant across the state line in Alabama, said there are plenty of benefits from unionizing. The contract at New Flyer gives workers protection from last-minute overtime work, along with more vacation time and raises averaging 15 to 38 percent through 2026.

“You have more money in your pocket at the end of the week,” he said. “You’re going to spend more money in your hometowns, and it’s going to boost the economy of your cities.”