This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sep. 4, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. “The new jobs of the South will be union jobs,” said Tim Smith, a regional director for the United Auto Workers, after the union announced Tuesday that 1,000 workers at Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee had voted to form a collective bargaining unit.