Halee Hadfield can recall exactly where she was when the fire broke out at BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky’s Hardin County. It was her day off from working in quality control at the company, a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and South Korean company SK On that supplies electric batteries to the U.S. automaker. Hadfield swiped over to the union organizing committee group chat on April 27, and saw 30 or 40 messages. She thought, “Oh shit, here we go.”
A fire had broken out near a series of massive vats holding flammable chemicals. Although nobody was hurt, many of the plant’s approximately 1,050 Kentucky workers were shaken by the experience: confusion over where to go, no fire alarms going off, and a general sense of chaos. Hadfield, who is part of a unionization effort with the United Auto Workers at the plant, recalled talking to her wife and parents as messages rolled in. “We’re all just kind of sitting there like, what’s it going to take for this company to actually care about the people who work here?”
