DETROIT—Ford Motor Co. hourly workers have voted 56 percent in favor of a tentative four-year labor agreement, according to results released on Saturday by the United Auto Workers (UAW).
The tally has seesawed since Friday. The day started with 53 percent voting against and ended with 54 percent in favor. The union’s Ford division said on its Facebook page as of 10 a.m. New York time on Saturday that 8,577 members had cast votes for the accord, while 6,710 had voted against it.
The post didn’t specify the percentage of Ford’s 40,600 US hourly workers who have had the chance to cast a ballot. Voting is set to conclude on Tuesday.
UAW President Bob King said last week that he expected members to ratify the agreement reached with Ford on October 4. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company pledged 12,000 new jobs, $6.2 billion in factory upgrades, and bonus and profit-sharing payments this year that total as much as $10,000 per worker. It won’t give raises for senior workers or restore cost-of-living pay increases workers gave up to help Ford survive.
“The fact the vote is this contentious suggests at worst that the contract is not overly generous to the UAW and at best is a good deal for Ford,” Adam Jonas, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, wrote in a research note suggesting investors buy Ford on UAW uncertainty. “UAW leadership is anxious to ratify the current contract as a rejection could open the door to a less attractive deal thanks to a deteriorating economy.”
“We remain optimistic that the tentative agreement will be approved,” Karen Hampton, a spokesman for Ford, said on Friday. “The agreement is fair to our employees and improves Ford’s competitiveness in the US.”
UAW Local 600, Ford’s largest union local representing workers at its vast Rouge complex in Dearborn, concluded voting on Friday. The UAW didn’t specify whether the results released on Saturday included Local 600’s vote. While it is King’s home local, it went against the union president’s recommendation two years ago and voted down concessions such as a ban on strikes until 2015.
That Local 600 vote helped defeat the proposals, meaning only Ford faced a strike possibility in this year’s labor talks. The UAW agreed to a strike ban at General Motors Co. and Fiat SpA-controlled Chrysler Group Llc. as part of their US-backed bankruptcies.
“People feel they deserve more,” Gary Walkowicz, a UAW Local 600 union official who is leading a “Vote No” campaign, said. “There is a lot of anger out here.”
Workers at a Ford metal-stamping plant in Chicago rejected the contract with 70 percent of the vote, according to results posted on the web site of UAW Local 588. At a company-owned parts plant in Saline, Michigan, 59 percent of production workers voted to turn down the contract, while 51 percent of skilled-trades employees rejected it, according to UAW Local 892’s web site.
The proposed agreement also has been rejected by Ford’s Chicago assembly plant, which builds the Taurus sedan and Explorer sport-utility vehicle, and a factory in Wayne, Michigan, that produces the Focus small car.
Members at Ford’s Mustang factory in Flat Rock, Michigan, voted 72 percent in favor of the agreement, with 1,190 workers for it and 318 against, according to a post on UAW Local 3000’s web site. The factory is to get a second shift to produce the Fusion midsize sedan under the new contract.
(Bloomberg News)
