Union jobs? Ford’s plan for new EV factories raises question

By TOM KRISHER, JONATHAN MATTISE and BRUCE SCHREINER
Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Ford’s blockbuster announcement this week that it would build four vast new factories in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2025 and hire nearly 11,000 workers raised a big unanswered question: Just how good will those jobs be? No one — not Ford, not the United Auto Workers union, not the future job holders themselves — yet knows how much the workers will be paid or whether they will vote for union membership. The new factories, to be built by 2025, are collectively intended to build batteries for electric vehicles as well as to assemble many such vehicles.