Detroit News: Marick Masters on pay scale at Ford Marshall battery plant
The average pay for the 2,500 workers expected to be employed at Ford Motor Co.'s Marshall electric vehicle battery plant would be about $45,000 a year, with three-quarters of the employees earning $41,600 annually, according to estimates provided this week to Michigan lawmakers. Ford company officials told lawmakers Wednesday that the pay would range between $20 and $50 an hour, but it was unclear at that point how many workers would be situated on the lower end of the pay scale. The pay scale proposed by Ford is lower than what one would see among workers at an internal combustion engine plant, but largely because battery plant workers have a different skill set and aren't unionized when they first begin work, said Marick Masters, a business professor and labor expert at Wayne State University. The average pay for a UAW employee is about $60,000 a year at an electrification plant, he said. "It's definitely off from what your typical standard UAW worker would be making," Masters said of the numbers released Wednesday. "But there's going to be tremendous pressure from the UAW to bring these workers under the master agreement."