General Motors and its partner are now making the battery cells for the GMC Hummer EV and SUV, both to be built at Factory Zero in Detroit and Hamtramck.
Ultium Cells LLC, the joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution, said Wednesday it had started production at its new battery cell factory in northeast Ohio.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine toured the $2.3 billion Ultium plant in Warren on Wednesday to see the battery cell manufacturing process first hand, Ultium spokeswoman Brooke Waid said. The plant, which employs about 800, is adjacent to GM’s former Lordstown Assembly plant. GM closed that plant and sold it to Lordstown Motors in 2019.
In a media statement, Ultium said it “continues to remain focused on training as it prepares to ramp up.” Once at full production, the plant expects to have created 1,300 new high-tech jobs.
Waid declined to disclose when the plant started operations, citing competitive reasons. She wrote in an email to the Free Press, “We have chosen to recognize these milestones internally as One Ultium Team. We are happy to share the process of the Ultium Cells team with Ohio Gov. DeWine today.”
Waid also declined to indicate which future EVs beyond the Hummer EV and SUV will get the battery cells from Ultium Warren, saying, “Ultium Cells is a supplier to GM and will not speculate nor comment on a GM product.” GM started building the Hummer last December. The 2023 Hummer starts at $108,700. The 2024 Hummer SUV is expected next spring starting at $79,995.
Meanwhile, the UAW continues to work to organize a portion of the workforce at the Ohio plant where it has come up against challenges over the terms of organizing.
On Wednesday, UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement to the Free Press, “We have been in ongoing conversations with General Motors and Ultium, as we are with other employers building products in the sectors that we represent. The UAW believes that employers should respect the majority will of workers and that is why we demand card check and neutrality in organizing campaigns.”
In a memo obtained by the Free Press in June, Terry Dittes, UAW vice president and director of the GM Department, said the union had just started organizing at Ultium Cells, but the company’s leaders have denied the union the use of a “card check” process to organize.
A card check lets the union skip the time and expense and risk of losing that comes with ballot elections. Instead if a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign the authorization cards stating they wish to be represented by the union, then the union automatically represents them.
“Ultium has flat out rejected those simple basic features of a card check recognition we proposed,” Dittes said in the memo.
But the company said at that time negotiations over the process continue and it supports workers’ right to unionize. When asked for an update on the negotiations with the union over organizing terms, Waid said Wednesday that Ultium Cells “respects employees’ rights determine their representation status.”
Dittes told the Free Press in June that the union remained committed to organizing at all three of GM’s Ultium locations, “along with every Electric Vehicle component supplier and Electric Vehicle Joint Venture. We continue to encourage all employers to recognize the majority will of their workers rather than to follow the counsel of anti-union consultants who want to put workers through the gauntlet of an anti-union campaign.”
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.