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On a bright winter afternoon in Hardin County, Kentucky, I drive through a snowy residential neighborhood, rural enough for a bird of prey with a critter in its talons to fly above my windshield. Then, turning a corner, I come to a massive, sprawling factory actively being built.
Smokestacks pump. Bulldozers push dirt. There are actually twin factories going up, side by side. A steady stream of Korean specialists — here from their homes six thousand miles away to train local workers — throw on hard hats and light cigarettes on their way into the plant. Somber warnings posted in English and Korean forbid anyone from capturing footage inside the plant. I loiter outside the metal detectors and the rest of the beefy security apparatus snapping photos on my phone until a guard hustles out ordering me to delete them. I feel like I’ve wandered into an exclusionary zone where a top-secret military base is being hastily constructed.
This is the electric vehicle battery plant BlueOval SK, a joint venture between American car giant Ford and the South Korean electric vehicle battery company SK On. Along with its sister plant in Tennessee, this will be the largest manufacturing project Ford has ever undertaken.
BlueOval SK is part of a rapid-fire blitz in American manufacturing pushed by generous corporate incentives in the Biden administration’s landmark 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or the IRA. Aiming to both fight climate change and boost American manufacturing, the Biden administration calculatedly tied the IRA’s green energy provisions to job creation. An estimated $422 billion in overall investments and 400,000 jobs have been announced in clean energy since the IRA was passed. More than half of those jobs are in Republican-held congressional districts like Hardin County.
Outside of Tennessee and Kentucky, plants like BlueOval SK have sprouted up in Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. Collectively, these manufacturing facilities have already garnered a nickname: the battery belt. But President Donald Trump, backed by 64 percent of Hardin County voters in the 2024 election, is vowing to stop the growth of the electric vehicle industry, which could soon endanger the prospects for both BlueOval SK and its workers. Republican lawmakers in this district are faced with a question: Will they stand with Trump or their own constituents’ livelihoods?
“We’re in the early stages of a once-in-a-century transition,” says Nick Nigro, founder of the clean-energy research firm Atlas Public Policy. In the electric vehicle industry, the paramount concern is the United States falling too far behind to the currently dominant Chinese market. “What’s on the line right now — it’s not just the jobs of today, it’s the jobs of the future. If we lose this market today, China and the rest of the world blows past us. The way for us to reduce the risk of losing jobs is to keep building the products of the future — and, frankly, to go faster.”
Now here’s the thing about all those new battery belt jobs: they can be extremely dangerous. Workers at battery plants face a harrowing array of hazards, from fires to toxic fumes to “acid spills potent enough to eat through flesh and bone.”
In Hardin County, those threats have supercharged a union drive. BlueOval SK won’t begin production in Kentucky until 2025, but its workers have already filed for an election to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), the powerful union representing nearly 400,000 members nationwide. Their unionization fight will come under a Trump administration that is actively reversing pro-union Joe Biden–era policies and a recently confirmed labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has already walked back her past support for legislation that supports union organizing.
Halee Hadfield — a quality operator at BlueOval SK — says that higher wages that might come through bargaining would be “gravy on the biscuits.” But what she really cares about is her health. Hadfield and her coworkers hope that by unionizing, they can win proper safety protocols and personal protective equipment.
“I’m twenty-fix,” she says. “I don’t wanna breathe in these fumes and go to the doctor at thirty-six because I have a cough that won’t stop and get told, ‘You have six months to live, you’re dying of cancer.’” Hadfield says she’s been explicitly told in training classes that the company is prioritizing its production goals over everything, including worker safety.
“All they care about is making batteries and making money,” Hadfield says. “I get that — we all have an interest in whether or not this company succeeds. But not at the expense of my literal life. Or anyone else’s.”
At BlueOval SK, the workers building the future of the car industry are in an unprecedented situation. They’re hoping Trump won’t kill their jobs. And they’re hoping their jobs won’t kill them.
In his January 20 inauguration speech, Trump promised that “we will build automobiles in America again at a rate that nobody could have dreamt possible just a few years ago,” meaning gas-powered cars, and boasted that his actions were all about “saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers.”
Rob Collette, a fortysomething self-described “punk-rock kid” covered in tattoos, is an operator in the formation process at BlueOval SK. Despite what Trump might suggest, Collette is very much an American autoworker. And he is a true believer in electrification and BlueOval SK. “The technology, the facility, the machinery,” he says. “It’s blown my mind.”
Several months back, while out on a cigarette break at work, Collette fell amid construction material. His foot caught on scaffolding, and his body landed awkwardly. He knew immediately that he’d broken his hip. Colette sees his injury as part of a pattern of neglect from BlueOval SK that means “nobody feels safe.”
But despite his injury, Collette can’t wait to get back to the job. He’s now in physical therapy twice a week, working as hard as he can on his rehabilitation.
“This is the future,” he says. “To be lucky enough to be a part of it — I feel it’s a blessing. We all want to build the best batteries available — we wanna ring bells.”
In an executive order released on the day of his inauguration, Trump promised “to eliminate the ‘electric vehicle mandate.’” While the order itself was largely ceremonial, the Trump administration has now begun to roll back Biden’s incentives. Actions have ranged from pausing a fund for electric vehicle charging stations to freezing all federal climate spending. While federal judges have instructed the administration to unfreeze the money, the disruption is already impacting projects nationwide. Additionally, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has stated that it plans to end the contracts for $20 billion in clean energy funds already allocated to communities across the country.
The ultimate goal for many Congressional Republicans will be to repeal parts or all of the IRA. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who represents Hardin County in the House, has championed that cause.
Elected as the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in December just after Trump’s election victory, Rep. Guthrie has attacked the IRA, referring to some of its provisions as “Green New Deal slush fund[s].” But when it comes to the IRA’s provisions boosting electric vehicles, Guthrie has not been so outspoken. When Kentucky’s BlueOval SK plant was first announced in 2021, Rep. Guthrie was happy to boast that the investment was “innovative” and “historic” for “hardworking Kentuckians.”
Guthrie’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this piece.
Despite having greatly benefited from the IRA, Tesla CEO and close Trump advisor Elon Musk supports Trump’s move to reverse its policies. “Take away the subsidies,” Musk has posted on X/Twitter. “It will only help Tesla.” The reason is both cynical and simple: Musk is likely betting that doing away with said subsidies will hurt his competition more than it will hurt him. As the American Prospect’s David Dayen has put it, Tesla would be “pulling up the ladder after climbing it themselves.”
BlueOval SK estimates it will employ five thousand people when fully up and running in Kentucky. According to a 2023 report commissioned by the Hardin County Chamber of Commerce, BlueOval SK has the potential to create more than eight thousand additional local jobs along with other ancillary effects: more housing, better hospital services, more students enrolled in the local school system.
The IRA accelerated the electric vehicle industry both by providing tax credits to consumers to incentivize them to purchase electric cars and by providing massive tax credits to the companies producing the vehicles and their component parts. On an earnings call soon after the IRA passed, Ford’s CEO estimated its credits could be worth up to $7 billion for the company over just the next few years. The federal government has also awarded more than $23 billion in loans and grants to the electric vehicle industry. That, in turn, led to roughly $150 billion in private investments.
Just before Biden left office, BlueOval SK received its $9.63 billion federal loan in full, a spokesperson for the company confirmed. “We will monitor changes made by the current administration and adapt as needed,” the spokesperson told me. “However, our vision of electrification remains a key part of the future.”
Hadfield says that she and her coworkers do at times have friendly debates about Trump’s policies and their potential impacts on their jobs, but that ultimately any differences in opinion are largely swept away by their symbiosis on the union efforts.
As for her personal point of view, she says, “There’s been subsidies for Wall Street. There’s been subsidies for oil companies. I don’t understand what the issue would be with subsidies as it pertains to investing in the future — quite literally — of mobility.”
Many of the states making up the battery belt, including Kentucky, have right-to-work laws, legislation supported by Trump and his new labor secretary that makes it harder for unions to collect dues and bargain. In 2023, the UAW won huge gains for their workers at plants owned or operated by Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis — including pay raises and improved profit sharing — after the “stand-up strike,” an innovative approach in which a collective 50,000 workers struck in waves for over a month. In the wake of the strike’s success, the UAW began branching out to the American South, where unions have historically struggled to gain ground.
The IRA offers manifold gifts to corporations, but it does not mandate any basic manufacturing labor conditions that companies must meet to qualify for all that free money. So while politicians love to boast that manufacturing facilities like the ones growing throughout the battery belt are bringing “good jobs” to their local economies, it’s often up to those workers to ensure that their jobs are, in fact, safe and well-paying.
The headquarters of the UAW’s Hardin County branch is a low, utilitarian brick building fronted by an American flag and, on a recent crisp winter night, slick patches of ice. Inside, BlueOval SK workers chat happily while rooting through boxes of bright red shirts reading “Future UAW member.” On one wall, a righteous bald eagle cruises alongside a relevant slogan: “AMERICA WORKS WHEN YOU BUY AMERICAN.”
Emily Drueke, a cheery twentysomething wearing a pink sweater and a penguin-shaped backpack, tells me that the issues she and her coworkers face range from lackluster health insurance to a literal bat infestation at a makeshift training center for BlueOval SK hires. “I saw one chase a girl,” Drueke says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m glad that ain’t me.’”
Then there’s the constant fear of fires and explosions stemming from the highly combustive nature of the raw materials in the plant. In training, they were told to refer to any such incidents by the mild euphemism “thermal events.” In South Korea, explosions at battery plants have led to mass casualties.
Driving around near BlueOval SK, you’ll see a crop of billboards plugging the plant. One reads “Kentucky is electric” and features a worker decked out in elaborate, futuristic personal protective equipment. In training, Halee Hadfield says, she was shown image after image of workers similarly decked out in what she calls “astronaut suits.”
When Hadfield actually began work, she was shocked to see that she wasn’t given enough respirators, professional-grade masks needed to filter out fumes and chemicals. “Thanks for the $60 branded company hoodie,” she seethes, “but I want my fucking respirator!” Borrowing an internet term referring to online impostors, Hadfield jokes, “I feel like I got catfished.”
If BlueOval SK’s union drive is successful, it won’t be the first battery belt facility to unionize. A few hundred miles north, in Lordstown, Ohio, employees at Ultium Cells — a joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solutions — now work under a UAW-negotiated contract that has stipulated pay raises, strict limits to chemical exposure, and the presence of full-time on-site health and safety representatives.
During their union push, Ultium employees reported frequent incidents involving exposure to toxic fumes, leading to dizziness, vomiting, and a string of other medical conditions. After one such exposure, an Ultium employee reported, “I come home every day, and I’m blowing black stuff out of my nose.” Proper safety protocols in battery plants are designed to minimize exposure and risk, but some of the materials are known to be carcinogenic. At Ultium, employees working in electrode mixing are now required to get tested for cancer every three years.
In 2023, the Ultium plant suffered an explosion. A subsequent investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency focused on worker safety, found that Ultium had not adequately trained its employees on safety protocols, did not properly label chemicals, did not provide eyewash stations and emergency showers, and “did not comply with federally required safety standards for the use of personal protective equipment, including respirators.”
In 2024, OSHA cited another SK On plant in Georgia for a variety of violations. In a statement, an OSHA representative said, “We have found SK Battery America failing in their responsibility to meet required federal standards designed to help every worker end their shift safely.”
In response to questions about safety concerns at BlueOval SK in Kentucky, a spokesperson provided a statement: “Personal protective equipment (PPE) is always required within the working areas of our facility. Our team members are provided PPE and instructed on how it is to be properly worn for optimal protection. We believe any claims to the contrary are not only false but malicious.”
As for the union drive, the statement reads, “Most of the team who will work at BlueOval SK Battery Park have not yet been hired.” It also notes that the UAW “is trying to rush BlueOval SK into unionization before our full workforce has the opportunity to make a truly free and informed choice.”
OSHA is part of the Department of Labor, which, along with much of the federal government, has become a target for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Musk is not necessarily an impartial actor: OSHA has repeatedly fined multiple Musk-owned companies for workplace safety violations. According to a 2023 Reuters investigation, Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has racked up hundreds of unreported workplace accidents involving “crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions,” and one death.
At BlueOval SK, workers say they have heard instructors refer to regulations from OSHA as “a speed bump.” Hadfield believes that BlueOval SK management doesn’t “understand that OSHA regulations are written in blood — that people had to die for it to get this serious.”
BlueOval SK workers say their frustrations are counterbalanced by the energy they get from the union drive and the promise the plant holds. Drueke says that union organizing meetings “remind me of church — the good parts! You leave feeling so happy. We all understand that this is for everybody in the plant — for everybody that’s ever going to step into the plant, even if it’s my great-grandkid. I want them all to go home with all their fingers and toes and no diseases.”
Keith Taul, Hardin County’s judge/executive — effectively its mayor — works out of a spacious corner office in a municipal building with the slight air of a modernist prison. We sit at a wide desk, a bowl of peppermints between us.
BlueOval SK is located in Glendale, a tiny unincorporated town within Hardin County known for a quaint restaurant, the Whistle Stop, that bills itself as the “Home of the Million Dollar Ham.” The plant’s presence, Taul says, means Hardin County locals can access “really good jobs, right here, close by, so you don’t have to go somewhere to find work and support a family and buy a home.”
Those jobs are being created in the wake of the Biden administration’s costly push to support the American electric vehicle industry. But if Trump fights the growth of that same industry, Taul says, he’s okay with it.
“We do have a massive EV battery plant here in Hardin County, and it has the capability of hiring a bunch of people — not just for Hardin County but this whole region, this whole state, really,” Taul says. “We need to support it. I want it to succeed.” But, Taul says, “I’m a Republican, okay? So I take the side of ‘let the industry grow as it needs to grow.’ I don’t know about the amount of money that it’s taken to try to incentivize electric vehicles.”
Taul is also “skeptical” about the climate change that is motivating the push for electric vehicles: “I don’t know that the almighty God said that our climate was always going to stay the same.”
As the battery belt has grown, some House Republicans have expressed conditional support for the IRA. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) himself has said he wants to use a “scalpel, not a sledgehammer” when approaching the IRA. In a meeting of the Ways and Means Committee held just after Trump’s 2025 inauguration, Republicans from Georgia to Michigan backed the bill.
“I ask that you proceed with caution when addressing provisions” that have created “thousands of jobs both throughout my district and across the country,” Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) said. “Upending these incentives could have severe economic consequences if not approached thoughtfully.”
The same day as the Ways and Means meeting, Rep. Houchin released a statement praising Trump for “making good on his promises to restore this country,” adding that the “executive orders issued on Day One” — which included the order aggressively attacking electric vehicles — “are common sense and have seen widespread support.”
How much of the IRA will Republicans actually scrap — at Trump’s urging and, in many districts, against their constituents’ own interests?
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) voted against the IRA but is now fighting to protect its provisions that boosted wind energy and the biofuel industry in his Nebraska district and throughout the state. (He says his opposition to the IRA was primarily rooted in its expansion of the IRS.) “I know a lot of Republican businessmen that have invested millions of dollars” in clean energy, he says. “You can’t withdraw these tax credits once people are already invested. These tax incentives are creating jobs. That’s a good thing.”
When we speak in early February, Rep. Bacon has just gotten out of a series of hours-long meetings with congressional Republicans and Trump in part about the IRA. “Some guys are hard of hearing. They keep saying let’s gut the IRA. I said, ‘Dudes — no. Let’s come to reality. You’re not getting the support.’”
Back in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is bullish on his state’s electrification plan and its job growth potential. While appearing on a decarbonization panel recently, Beshear explained his support for plants like BlueOval SK by referencing the collapse of the local coal industry. “I never wanted our people to be behind that curve again,” Beshear said, and to “have to suffer the job losses.”
“The desire for sustainability was there before the previous administration, and it will remain after the current administration,” he added. “A lot of people have tried to fight the future, and no one’s ever won.”
On my last night in Hardin County, I go back to the local UAW hall. The vibe isn’t as chummy as my first visit. BlueOval SK appears to have begun its anti-union push, the organizers report; employees have been ushered into meetings with outside consultants. Tonight, organizers have been role-playing conversations they may have with coworkers and management about the union. “You can feel the temperature turn up,” Bill Wilmoth, an impassioned organizer, tells me.
Wilmoth worries that less-informed or newer workers — “people that are already a little nervous, a little scared, a little uncertain in this environment” — will be easily frightened away from joining the union by these meetings. “It’s morally unconscionable,” he says. “Doggone it, how can you knowingly — now knowingly — prey on people?”
Traditionally known as “captive audience meetings,” such gatherings were declared to be unfair labor practices by Biden’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, empowering workers to avoid the anti-union propaganda. William B. Cowen, the board’s Trump-appointed acting general counsel, has already indicated he will push the board to overturn that decision; Cowen is also indicating he will encourage the board to reverse recently established standards protecting workers from company interference in union elections.
While Trump claims the mantle of working-class protector, his administration’s policies could make it exceedingly difficult for the workers at BlueOval SK to win their union.
Those workers know that the future of their livelihoods may depend on decisions made in Washington, DC. And Wilmoth — a self-described “right-wing libertarian” — expresses hope that Trump’s relationship with Musk means he might, ultimately, continue the federal government’s support of electric vehicles. Ultimately, though, the workers are confident that BlueOval SK will continue to grow alongside the electric vehicle industry because they trust that the future is coming.
“Years ago, when everybody was driving horses and buggies, they said, ‘These Ford Model T’s wasn’t never gonna take off;” says Wilmoth’s coworker Chad Johnson. “Over time, it doesn’t matter who’s in the White House or who’s in the Kremlin — these things are gonna take off.”
Walking out of the UAW hall at the end of the night, Johnson and Wilmoth joke around about typo-laden memes attacking their union drive that have been spreading online. They’re holding thick stacks of union leaflets. Tomorrow they’ll be at the plant early, before their shifts, to hand out the material for folks who can’t make it to the nighttime organizing meetings. The date for the union election has not yet been set by the NLRB, but these workers want to do as much as they can before that day comes.
“I don’t see anything dampening my confidence in what we’re doing,” Johnson says. “It’s a resolve that nothing’s going to stand in the way. It’s not a matter of if we win — it’s when we win and how big we win.”
As they scatter carefully over the icy parking lot to their cars, Wilmoth shouts out through the darkness: “And after we win, we’ll invite you to the party!”
Great Job Amos Barshad & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
