Auto workers union, Sanders blast GM for wages at US battery plant

Fain, who won election as UAW president last month, said the Ultium plant at full production will receive more than $1.2 billion a year in U.S. battery production tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). GM CEO Mary Barra said on an earnings call Tuesday the plant should be at full capacity at the end of the year.

“It is absolutely not acceptable,” said Sanders, a former Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont independent who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee.

The IRA creates a $45 per kilowatt battery production tax credit.

GM closed its Lordstown Assembly plant in March 2019. It opened with partner LG Energy Solution the Ultium battery manufacturing plant in August 2022 in nearby Warren, Ohio. The pair are building two other JV battery plants in Michigan and Tennessee.

Workers at Warren voted to join the UAW but have not yet reached a first contract agreement.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown met with Fain and said on Twitter “as we develop the electric vehicles of the future, those jobs must be Ohio jobs and they must be union jobs.”

GM did not immediately comment on Sanders criticism. Ultium said in a statement last week it “is committed to the collective bargaining process, and will work in good faith with the UAW to reach a competitive agreement that positions our employees and our Ohio battery cell manufacturing facility for success.”