Striking United Auto Workers members from the General Motors Lansing Delta Plant picket in Delta Township, Michigan U.S. September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Phototo open the doors for the union to organize future battery plant workers, and to raise wages at their respective joint-venture battery plants to match assembly workers' pay.
The flow of cash from the IRA could be substantial. For example, 1,300 workers at GM's Ultium LLC battery plant in Northeast Ohio could some day produce 35 gigawatt hours of batteries annually, or 13 kilowatt-hours for each hour in a worker's 40-hour week. Detroit automakers also worry that Chinese battery makers such as CATL, whose costs are substantially lower than theirs, could eventually breach trade barriers that have discouraged them from entering the U.S. market.Fain has rejected the automakers' concerns about Tesla as a "race to the bottom."