Workers Say Plant Eligible for $2 Billion in Public Funds Is Union-Busting

https://prospect.org/labor/2024-09-04-workers-say-plant-union-busting-eos/

Eos’s Pittsburgh-area battery plant got subsidies aimed at ‘good clean jobs.’ Its workers say they’re getting fired for unionizing.

by Kalena Thomhave

September 4, 2024


Kalena Thomhave

The Keystone Commons industrial park in the Pittsburgh suburb of Turtle Creek is home to a zinc battery plant operated by Eos Energy Enterprises.

This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. It is co-published here with permission.

When Stan Upshaw got a job at Eos Energy Enterprises Inc. in 2020, he hoped for good pay and benefits, like the ones that went to union workers who decades ago built American manufacturing. After all, Eos’s zinc battery plant in the Pittsburgh suburb of Turtle Creek had already received a nearly $400 million conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, as well as millions in subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act.

At Eos, Upshaw said he didn’t see the “good clean jobs” the act was meant to create. Instead, he saw management ignore seniority—and force workers to train new supervisors rather than promote from within, he said. The work felt dangerous, too. “We’re having people getting their fingers pinched [under batteries and] working under very hot, humid conditions [where] we’re almost tripping over each other, ” he said.

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So earlier this year, Upshaw and some of his coworkers began to push for representation by the United Steelworkers union. In early August, they filed a petition to hold a union election; on Sept. 5, they’ll cast their votes and test whether reality in Turtle Creek matches the talk about the Inflation Reduction Act’s good jobs.

In an emailed statement, Chad FitzGerald, Eos vice president of strategic partnerships and public affairs, said that the company is “a pro-union company,” adding, “We respect our employees’ right to choose or not choose to have a labor representative.”

FULL story at link above.