Election day is approaching for nearly 1,500 workers at an electric vehicle battery plant in Kentucky. Hourly workers at the sprawling BlueOval SK Battery Park will vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers Union.
The National Labor Relations Board has scheduled the secret ballot election for Aug. 26-27.
The election comes amid bitter tensions between workers and the company over safety and health issues.
Nearly a century ago, Ford Motor Company workers in Michigan pushed for safer factories. Today, their counterparts say they’re engaged in the same high stakes fight in Kentucky.
“It’s our time to sit across the table from management as equals," says one worker in a video produced by the United Auto Workers Union. “We want a legally binding contract that guarantees our wage, healthcare, PTO policies, and health and safety.”
Safety issues are 'not a joke'
For more than a year, the plant in Glendale, which is a partnership between Ford and South Korea-based SK On, has faced worker complaints over issues including mold, bat infestations, a lack of protective gear, fires, and exposure to dangerous chemicals.
Halee Hadfield works in quality control at BlueOval SK and is one of the workers raising concerns.
“There is enough chemical in this battery park to level all of Glendale and probably more than half of Elizabethtown," Hadfield told WKU Public Radio. "That’s not a joke.”
Health and safety concerns have supercharged the union drive at the Hardin County campus that produces batteries for Ford and Lincoln EVs. At least a dozen worker complaints have been filed with Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health, according to an investigation by the Courier-Journal. Employees reported feeling unsafe working with toxic chemicals and claim there’s been a lack of proper training.
“A worker should have the ability to go to work and then come home and hug their family at the end of the day with two arms and ten fingers," said UAW Region 8 Director Tim Smith.
The union vote at Ford comes as another automaker, Hyundai, grapples with worker safety concerns at its battery megaplant in Georgia. Two workers have been killed this year at the facility and several have been injured in recent years.
As of last month, Blue Oval SK had only received one citation from Kentucky OSHA related to fire extinguishers.
"BlueOval SK is proud of our safety record. We constantly strive to improve and adapt our processes and procedures to remain on the leading edge of providing the safest environment possible for our team members," said Mark Hayley, Plant Manager of BlueOval's Kentucky 1 plant in Glendale. “Safety is a job that is never done. BlueOval SK maintains a full-time, on-site Safety and Emergency Response Team that operates 24/7 every day the plant is in operation. Safety is our foundation."
Production operator Bill Wilmoth said workers' concerns have largely been dismissed by the company.
“A union safety committee can help sit down with the safety department to go over issues," Wilmoth said. "Right now, it doesn’t matter if all of us walk in there together or we go one at a time, we don’t get anywhere."
“Our team members are determined to produce best-in-class batteries,” Assistant Plant Manager Ben Gassman said in a statement. “The UAW will only hold our team back.”
After a supermajority of workers filed in favor of holding a union election in January, the company launched an anti-union campaign that relied heavily on digital advertising.
“Generally, these campaigns are quite effective", said Professor Ariana Levinson who specializes in labor and employment law at the University of Louisville. "That’s why employers are willing to spend lots of money on consultants to aid them with these campaigns.”
Were anti-union meetings mandatory or voluntary?
The company faces multiple allegations of unfair labor practices. The UAW alleges BlueOval SK has illegally fired workers for organizing, threatened to close the plant if it becomes unionized, and forced workers to attend captive audience meetings.
Production worker Joshua Urso said the company's "coffee talks" are often used to persuade workers to vote against unionization.
"The way it would work at first was, they would tell us some information and plans for the plant, and then at the end, they would throw in something like, 'Hey, vote no,'" Urso told WKU Public Radio. "It's definitely a captive audience. They'll tell you it's voluntary, but when it's time for a meeting, a supervisor will tell the whole area, 'Alright everybody, go to the meeting.'"
BlueOval SK declined interviews, but said in a statement that its team members have endured months of "union sales tactics and slanders" against their jobs, and are ready for their voices to be heard.
Currently, BlueOval SK is the only electic vehicle battery plant involving the Big Three automakers that is non-union. The UAW notched its first win at a battery plant in Ohio in 2022, followed by another in Tennessee in 2024, and one this year in Indiana.
“This is sort of a watershed moment for this burgeoning EV sector," said Eric Dixon, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a Louisville-based group advocating for solutions to environmental and energy issues facing Appalachia. “There’s also other benefits, ripple effects, that other workplaces in Kentucky could see because the plant is so large and it’s such a marquee economic development project for the state.”
The organizing success in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee, is part of the UAW's broader effort to unionize workers at EV battery plants across the country, including in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
The UAW has had mixed success in recent years organizing in the South, a region where many states have right-to-work laws which forbid payment of union dues as a condition of getting or keeping a job.
The UAW lost an election this month at an auto manufacturer in Alabama after experiencing defeat at another plant in that state in 2024.
In 2024, only 8.8% wage and salary workers in Kentucky belonged to a union. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports union membership in the commonwealth was slightly below the national average of just 9.9%.
The Blue Oval SK election is happening in deep-red Hardin County, Kentucky, where 64% of voters in the 2024 election cast ballots for Donald Trump—someone who says he wants to stop the growth of the EV industry.
The makings of 'a historic election'
Voting begins Tuesday, Aug. 26, and the ballot counting will take place the following day after polls close Wednesday at 8 p.m.
If the UAW loses the vote, the National Labor Relations Board allows another election in one year. If the UAW vote is successful, Glendale workers will form their own local and begin working toward a contract.
"I think this is a historic election, not only for Kentucky, but our country and for manufacturing," said University of Louisville labor professor Ariana Levinson. "The UAW had great gains after the Stand Up strike in 2023 and one of their goals was to organize the unorganized, and so I think this bears on the whole manufacturing industry, where we're going in the future."
Meanwhile, the first electric battery rolled off the assembly line on Aug. 19 in Glendale and will power the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning. The production launch came four years after Ford and SK On announced plans to build the nearly 1,500-acre campus. The $5.8 billion investment was designed as a twin-plant operation, but only one is currently online.
Construction of the second facility has been delayed due to softer-than-anticipated consumer demand for EVS.
Production in Glendale comes at a time when the U.S. electric vehicle market is facing some uncertainty, including slow EV adoption and the sunsetting of consumer tax credits for purchasing EVs. Ford is reportedly considering options to maximize the Glendale plant’s capacity, including supplying batteries to Nissan.
Ford and SK On announced Aug. 19 that its battery plant in West Tennessee was delaying production until 2027.
