The United Auto Workers surprised Ford with a major escalation of its strike, ordering workers to walk off the job at the company’s largest plant.
Late on Wednesday, the union ordered 8,700 workers to strike at the Kentucky Truck Plant, which builds some of Ford’s most important vehicles, including the heavy-duty version of its F-Series pickup truck and its full-size SUVs.
“We have been crystal clear and we have waited long enough, but Ford has not gotten the message,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. “It is time for a fair contract at Ford and the rest of the Big Three. If they don’t get it after four weeks, the 8,700 workers who are shutting down this highly profitable plant will help them understand.”
A Ford official told the media that the UAW had called a bargaining session with Ford for Wednesday evening. He said the union wanted a different offer from Ford than it had previously made. After a very brief discussion that lasted only a few minutes, Fain told company officials, “If that’s all you’ve got, you’ve just lost KTP,” and the meeting ended, according to the Ford official.
A union source has a similar version of the brief negotiating session, with Fain telling Ford officials, “If that’s all you have for us, our members’ lives and my handshake are worth more than that. This just cost you the Kentucky Truck Plant”.
The union official said Fain told the company that he and the union’s top negotiator at Ford would consider the offer, but that it was the same offer Ford had made to the union weeks earlier, despite the company telling the union it would make a new economic offer.
The UAW has been on strike since 15 September not only at Ford but also at General Motors and Stellantis. This is not the first time the union has extended the strike to other plants. But this is the first time it has expanded the strike to additional targets without any public warning that an expansion would take place.
The expansion of the strike took place at 6.30pm ET on Wednesday evening, although the Ford official said that pre-bargaining talks on the plant floor indicated that workers would walk out after 6pm.
By targeting the Kentucky Truck Plant, the union is going after a much more profitable part of Ford’s product range. The vehicles at the plant generate $25 billion in annual revenue for the company, or about one-sixth of its total global sales. While it does not produce the F-150, the company’s best-selling vehicle, it does build the larger versions of the truck, as well as the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs.
Until Wednesday night, the UAW’s strike at Ford was targeted at a plant in Wayne, Michigan, which builds the Ford Ranger small pickup truck and the Bronco, and the Chicago Assembly Plant, which builds the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Aviator SUVs. While these are all profitable vehicles, they are not the profit drivers that are Ford’s heavy-duty pickups and full-size pickups.
The company said it believes the economic terms of the offer, in terms of wages and benefits, are the best ever made by any of the three automakers.
“The decision by the UAW leadership to reject this record contract offer – which the UAW has publicly described as the best offer on the table – and to strike the Kentucky Truck Plant has serious consequences for our employees, suppliers, dealers and commercial customers,” said a statement from Ford.
It said that the closure of the Kentucky Truck Plant also puts at risk about a dozen other Ford plants and many more supplier operations, which together employ well over 100,000 people.
There had been hopes that enough progress was being made that an agreement to end the strike at at least one of the companies could be imminent. On Friday, Fain refused to expand the strike, telling union members that GM had agreed to a key bargaining demand to include workers at a joint venture battery plant it has opened and others it plans in this national master agreement with the union.
The union is deeply concerned that the automaker’s plans to shift from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles in the coming years could cost members their jobs by shifting work from union-represented engine and transmission plants to non-union battery plants.
The Ford official said most of the negotiations between the UAW and the company so far this week have focused on the company’s own joint-venture battery plants, as well as pension benefits, another major bargaining demand for the union. He said progress had been made on those issues before Wednesday’s bargaining session.
