(New York) Bill Ford, great-grandson of the founder of the eponymous automaker and current chairman of its board of directors, appealed Monday to his “colleagues” in the UAW union to end the “round of negotiations acrimonious” and the “devastating” strike.
“I appeal to my fantastic colleagues at the UAW […]. We must come together to end this cycle of acrimonious negotiations,” said Bill Ford, speaking from the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Ford group, like its two major competitors in the United States General Motors and Stellantis, has been affected since mid-September by a strike linked to the development of the next collective agreements. Nearly 34,000 employees are mobilized, out of their 146,000 enrolled at the UAW.
This is the first time that all three groups have been targeted at the same time.
The list of mobilized sites has grown or not as discussions progressed, affecting secondary factories, but the United Auto Workers union struck a major blow last week by shutting down the Kentucky Truck Plant ( KTP), Ford’s largest plant. It generates $25 billion in revenue per year.
The president of the union, Shawn Fain, explained Friday that Ford had submitted on Wednesday afternoon exactly the same offer as two weeks earlier, “without additional money”, hence the walkout decided immediately.
“We are at a crossroads. […] It should not be Ford against the UAW, it should be Ford and the UAW against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and all the Chinese groups that want to enter our market,” Mr. Ford said.
“We agree that our UAW colleagues deserve more. This is why we offered a record contract, which would place them among the highest paid industrial employees in the world,” he noted. “Despite this, the UAW has opted for escalation,” he lamented.
According to Mr. Ford, “Closing [the KTP] immediately harms tens of thousands of Americans. Employees, Suppliers, Dealers.”
“Bill Ford knows exactly how to resolve this strike,” responded Mr. Fain, “he should contact Jim Farley [Ford boss, Editor’s note], tell him to stop playing with fire and make a deal.”
“Otherwise we will close [Ford] Rouge for him,” the trade unionist warned. “It’s not Ford and the UAW versus foreign manufacturers. It’s auto workers everywhere against corporate greed,” he said.
If the strike continues, “it will have a major impact on the American economy and devastate local communities,” Ford said, saying that “the supply network is very fragile and will begin to collapse with an extended strike “.
“After 120 years, Ford remains a family business. […] All this is extremely personal for me,” underlined the man who joined Ford in 1979, led it from 2001 to 2006 and has since chaired its board of directors.
“I am working for a bright future, not just for my children and grandchildren, but for the hundreds of thousands of families who depend on the Ford Group,” Mr. Ford said. “Let’s come together, find an agreement so that we can fight against the real competition,” he hoped.