UAW claims BlueOval battery plant victory. Some ballots are being challenged
One of the country’s largest labor unions is claiming a victory in Kentucky’s growing electric vehicle battery industry.
The United Auto Workers will represent workers at BlueOval SK, the group announced minutes before midnight Wednesday, following a two-day, secret ballot election for a union at the sprawling, not-yet-completed campus near Elizabethtown, where about 1,450 people are employed making electric vehicle batteries for Ford Motor Co.
There were 1,249 eligible voters, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Of the 1,082 ballots counted, 526 were yes votes and 515 were no votes. A single ballot was void, and 167 workers who were eligible did not vote.
Some 41 votes are being challenged, meaning the labor board hasn’t decided those employees’ eligibility to participate in the election. Those ballots could sway the election’s final results, but the UAW is calling the vote “a hard-fought victory.”
“Tonight, BlueOval SK workers won a majority of votes in an NLRB election to unionize their plant,” the UAW said. “... This is a major step forward for workers who stood up against intense company opposition and chose to join the UAW.”
BlueOval said it “will urge the Board to count each eligible vote because every voice matters. We remain focused on the safety and wellbeing of our team and our commitment to build best-in-class batteries together.”
In his Team Kentucky update Aug. 28, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear described himself as a “pro-union governor.”
“I think that the vote of the employees should be recognized,” he said. “And if it indeed ends up being a union facility, I think what the company is going to see is that union workers are some of the best workers, and the ability to attract even more workers will be a positive in the long term for BlueOval.”
The vote took place Aug. 26 and 27, just days after the first battery rolled off the assembly line, and months after workers first requested the labor board allow the election. Since signing union authorization cards in November 2024, workers have detailed an uphill battle to election, full of anti-union campaigning from their employer.
Earlier this year, whistleblowers at BlueOval also drew attention to a pattern of workplace injuries and concern workers had faulty safety equipment.
The challenged ballots, the UAW said, “are illegitimate and represent nothing more than an employer tactic to flood the unit and undermine the outcome. We will fight these challenges to defend the democratic choices of these workers, as we always do when corporations try to interfere with workers’ democratic choice.”
The battery plant is a nearly $6 billion project from Ford and South Korean-based company SK On. In Glendale, about 90 minutes southwest of Lexington, the companies have long promised to construct two plants on 1,500 acres where they will employ 5,000 people. Only one plant, Kentucky 1, is operating, and so far, it employs just over 1,400 people.
The UAW in its statement said it was calling on Ford to acknowledge the “decision of its workforce” and drop its “anti-democratic effort to undermine the outcome of the election.”
The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy’s Executive Director Jason Bailey told the Herald-Leader a vote for a union is a vote for more than just a voice in the workplace about their wages and working conditions.
“It has a good chance of giving other Kentucky workers the confidence they need to stand up,” he said. “That’s increasingly needed, as median inflation-adjusted wages in the state have fallen over $9,000 a year as the industry has become more non-union.”
This story was updated at 5:45 p.m. with commentary from Beshear. It may be updated again.
This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 8:55 AM.
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