Someday after Ford CEO stated union exercise was making him rethink the place the corporate places its crops, the United Auto Employees union is threatening a strike on the firm’s largest and most worthwhile manufacturing unit.
The union stated Friday that almost 9,000 staff on the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville will strike on Feb. 23 if a dispute over the native contract isn’t resolved.
If there’s a strike, it will be the second time the union has walked out on the sprawling manufacturing unit previously 12 months, after UAW staff shut down the plant in October throughout nationwide contract negotiations that ended with large raises for employees.
The plant, one in all two Ford factories in Louisville, makes heavy-duty F-Sequence pickup vans and the Ford Tour and Lincoln Navigator giant SUVs, all massively worthwhile autos for the corporate.
The union says that staff have been with out a native contract for 5 months. The primary areas of dispute are well being and issues of safety, minimal in-plant nurse staffing, ergonomic points, and the corporate’s effort to cut back the variety of expert trades staff. The strike might start at 12:01 a.m. on Feb. 23, the union says, noting that there are 19 different native agreements being negotiated with Ford, and several other extra at rivals General Motors and Stellantis.
A message was left Friday looking for remark from Ford.
The day earlier than, Ford CEO Jim Farley advised an analysts’ convention in New York that final fall’s contentious strike modified Ford’s relationship with the union to the purpose the place the automaker will “think carefully” about where it builds future vehicles.
“It was an extremely difficult moment for the company,” Farley stated throughout remarks to the Wolfe Analysis International Auto and Auto Tech Convention in New York. “It’s been a watershed moment for the company. Does it have a business impact? Yes.”
Farley stated that the Louisville manufacturing unit was the primary truck plant that the UAW shut down throughout final 12 months’s strike, which cost the company $1.7 billion over six weeks of misplaced manufacturing. That’s despite the fact that Ford made a aware resolution to construct all of its pickup vans within the U.S., Farley famous.
Rivals Normal Motors and Stellantis have truck crops within the U.S. and Mexico. “They went through bankruptcy and they moved production,” Farley said, in line with the Detroit Free Press.
On the subject of constructing pickups solely within the U.S., “we always thought it was the right kind of cost,” Farley stated, in line with outlet. However after the strike, he stated, “Clearly, our relationship has changed.”
The strike was an incredible success for UAW members, who gained raises as much as $40 an hour and did away with unpopular phrases within the contract, equivalent to “two-tier” wages by which staff had been paid totally different charges for a similar work, relying on once they had been employed. The employees’ wins add as much as practically $9 billion in further prices for Ford, which the corporate stated works out to about $900 extra per automobile.
