As a dispute between the United Auto Workers and major auto manufacturers comes to the foreground, all eyes turn toward the White House with two of the administration’s priorities, electric vehicles and union jobs, at the center of the conflict.

The union’s grievance is that employees of Ultium Cells LLC, a joint venture involving General Motors and LG Energy Solution that manufactures batteries, are not covered under the UAW’s agreement, as is the general rule at most battery plants.

The UAW is demanding that employees at an Ultium Cells plant at Lordstown, Ohio, a town about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and employees at similar plants be covered under a national collective bargaining agreement.

Since the beginning of the year, the union has been pushing for President Biden and his administration, who are eager to boost domestic battery manufacturing, to work toward EV jobs being included under the union agreement.

The president of the UAW, Shawn Fain, criticized the administration for giving out “no strings attached” loans to auto manufactures, singling out the plant at Lordstown and claiming that companies have taken the push for EVs as a way to cut union jobs and replace them with non-union positions.

Across multiple different pieces of legislation, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflations Reduction Act, and the Chips and Science Act, Congress has passed and Mr. Biden has supported billions of dollars in funding for increasing EV production.

In addition to public investment, companies have also received loans from the Department of Energy to invest in EV manufacturing. Ford, say, received a $9.2 billion loan earlier this year to invest in EV manufacturing. 

Mr. Biden’s support for investment in EVs, combined with the fact that some companies have worked to keep EV manufacturing employees out of collective bargaining agreements, has put stress on the president’s relationship with the UAW.

“In the past five years, workers who build GM products in Lordstown, Ohio, have had their lives turned upside down as they were forced to retire, quit or uproot their families,” Mr. Fain said in a statement. “Their jobs were replaced in GM’s new joint-venture battery facility with jobs that pay half of what workers made at the previous Lordstown plant.”

Because Ultium is technically a new company, it is not beholden to any collective bargaining agreements between GM and the UAW, a workaround that could provide a model for companies to exclude certain manufacturing employees from union agreements.

Late last year, the employees at the Ultium plant voted overwhelmingly — 710 to 16 — to join the UAW. Since then, negotiations between the union and Ultium have stalled out.

As it stands, the union is seeking wages comparable to those for the jobs that were eliminated with the creation of the joint venture. When GM closed its factory in the area, its employees earned $32 hourly. Now, EV manufacturing employees start at $16.50 an hour.

The situation at Ultium is also part of a larger conflict between the UAW and Detroit’s “Big Three” auto manufacturers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, which renegotiate their contract with the UAW every four years.

Contract negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three have been going on throughout the summer, and the companies and the union will need to reach an agreement by the time the current deal expires on September 14.

The bigger picture in this conflict is that the union is seeking to return to a pre-2007 sort of bargaining agreement. In 2007, the union agreed to a contract that created a two-tiered wage system for newer and more experienced employees, and eliminated cost-of-living allowances, among other concessions, in an attempt to help save the American auto industry during the Great Recession.

Mr. Fain says he is willing to call a strike at the Big Three manufacturers until the demands are met, saying in a statement that if the Big Three “don’t give us our fair share, then they’re choosing to strike themselves and we’re not afraid to take action.”

“The Big Three is our strike target,” Mr. Fain said. “And whether or not there’s a strike, it’s up to Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.”

In response to the union demands, the Big Three have pointed to investments in North American factories and their profit-sharing system, which saw hourly UAW employees at Ford take home an extra $7,377 last year.

Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, and GM’s president, Mark Ruess, also published an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press saying, “We share common goals” with the union and that they want to strike “a new deal that allows us to stay ahead of the changing industry landscape, protecting good-paying jobs in the U.S.”

The companies have, though, criticized the union’s demands, saying that giving into everything they’ve asked for would threaten the future of the business.

Between the Ultium conflict and the broader negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three, the union has called on Democrats at Washington, D.C., for help, and has thus far received some support.

Last month, 28 Democratic senators, led by Senator Brown, who represents Ohio, sent a letter in support of the UAW, calling on the Big Three to negotiate in good faith and to include EV manufacturing employees, like those at Ultium.

“We urge you to negotiate in good faith to reach a fair outcome by agreeing to fold workers at all joint venture electric vehicle battery facilities into the national UAW contract,” the letter reads.

It looks, too, like Mr. Biden will be forced to get involved as well, with a White House economic advisor, Gene Sperling, telling the Washington Post that Mr. Biden “is in overall agreement that we need a just transition to electric vehicles that promotes not just more jobs but good union jobs.”

It’s clear, though, that Mr. Fain isn’t happy with this level of support from the president, responding to the Post that Mr. Biden needs to be “a hell of a lot more vocal” and adding, “We’re not going to give Biden credit for helping out in Lordstown if the jobs at Ultium remain poverty-level.”

Last month, Mr. Biden met with Mr. Fain, giving the union leader an opportunity to brief White House staff on the ongoing negotiations. Mr. Fain maintains, as he has since May, that he will not endorse Mr. Biden because of his lack of action on the issue of EV manufacturing employees being covered under the UAW’s agreement.