Cars? Jobs? Yes Maybe

Lordstown, Ohio, is getting a new factory making batteries for electric vehicles, but it will employ less than one-third as many workers as the auto plant it’s replacing

- David Rocks

It’s just after 2 p.m., and Justin Brown is waving down the bartender at Ross’ Eatery & Pub, a dimly lit dive in the shadow of the old General Motors Co. assembly plant. It isn’t hard to get her attention. The crowds have thinned since GM closed the factory two years ago, cutting about 3,300 workers and striking another blow to Lordstown and other cities in northeastern Ohio still reeling from the loss of highly paid steel jobs in the 1980s.

When the plant closed, Brown was transferred to a GM facility in Missouri, though he frequently makes the nine-hour drive in his Lordstown-built Chevrolet Cruze to help his aging parents and look after his house. Furloughed because of a semiconductor chip shortage, he’s back in Lordstown on a balmy afternoon with plenty of time to ponder whether to stay at GM or return home for a shot at a job that would require months of training and a pay cut of 30% or more.

Less than a mile from Brown’s barstool, construction crews are building a $2.3 billion battery plant in an empty field just behind the old GM site. The blindingly white expanse of concrete, the size of 30 football fields, stands at the center of U.S. efforts to compete in the global race for electric vehicles. A joint venture between GM and South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd., it will be just the second such facility in the U.S., after Tesla Inc.’s battery factory in Nevada. The company, Ultium Cells LLC, is a separate entity from the Detroit automaker, so Brown’s 13 years at GM are worth less than the can of beer in his hand. If Ultium were to hire him at all.