Ford Motor Co., the second-largest U.S. automaker, plans to add 27 percent more UAW positions at its U.S. plants than originally planned, citing flexible labor contracts that reduced the cost of employing union members. Ford has agreed to add 1,975 jobs, 416 more than originally agreed to, by 2012 to do work traditionally done by suppliers. The automaker has added 1,340 of those jobs since 2008. The jobs at nine U.S. plants will be filled by a mix of idled current Ford workers and new hires, Jennifer Flake, a spokeswoman, said in an interview.
Ford said agreements with the United Auto Workers union make the new positions possible by allowing the carmaker to do work in house that it had previously contracted to other companies. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford said yesterday its retail market share may have increased for the 21st time in the past 22 months.
“It’s all about having an open and honest discussion around competitiveness,” Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, told reporters at an automotive conference in Acme, Michigan. “When you can combine open discussion and open minds and competitiveness, you can do wonderful things and bring jobs back into Ford and back into the U.S.”
Union Focus
The crisis in the auto industry forced a new level of collaboration between the union and automakers, UAW President Bob King said earlier in the week.
“Our goal is to have viable, long-term successful companies,” King told reporters at the conference Aug. 2. The “way to get our membership back and growing is for the companies to be growing sales, volume and market share. That’s what our focus is.”
Ford said it’s adding the positions at its: Sharonville, Ohio, transmission plant; Wayne, Michigan, assembly plant; Chicago Stamping Plant; the Sterling plant and Van Dyke transmission plant, both in Sterling Heights, Michigan; and the Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The work at the Ypsilanti and Van Dyke plants was done by suppliers in Japan and Mexico, Ford said.
The automaker had committed to hiring 1,559 such workers over the term of the four-year contract.
Lower Wages
Ford also started hiring workers at the new entry-level wage of about $14 an hour at the Chicago assembly plant where the 2011 Explorer will be made, Fields told reporters yesterday at the conference.
The hiring started “a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
Ford said in January it was adding 1,200 jobs and a second shift at the plant. Fields said the workers are the first Ford has hired under the new two-tier wage system, agreed to in 2007, which starts at about half the amount paid to hourly production workers hired previously.
Ford rose 20 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $13.11 at 10:25 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The company’s shares rose 29 percent this year before today.
The auto industry is emerging from a tough period, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said in a speech at the conference.
“What a difference a year makes,” said Granholm, a Democrat. “We can’t claim victory yet, but I’m really pleased we’ve started to emerge from a very, very difficult period of time.”
