UAW Selects Ford as ’87 Strike Target : Most Profitable Auto Maker at Risk; Pacts Expire Sept. 14

The United Auto Workers has chosen the industry’s most profitable company, Ford Motor Co., rather than General Motors Corp. as its strike target in this year’s national contract talks, UAW President Owen Bieber said today.

Bieber told the 300-member Council of GM Workers that the decision is best for the union and for workers at both companies.

The decision means that bargaining, which began in late July with both companies, will intensify at Ford during the countdown toward a Sept. 14 contract expiration deadline.

If no agreement is reached by the deadline, the union could strike Ford.

Ford, which has 104,000 U.S. hourly workers, has not been hit by a national walkout since 1976, when the UAW struck the company for 28 days.

‘It’s Time for Ford’

GM, meanwhile, will be able to sit on the sidelines and watch without immediate fear that 1988 model production will be interrupted. The union would turn its attention to GM once it reached an agreement with Ford, and would try to use the Ford agreement as a pattern.

“General Motors has built the contract the last two times. I feel it’s time for Ford to put together a contract we can all live under,” said Joe Lefever, a representative of Local 192 in Maumee, Ohio.

Lefever said he believes that the UAW can get a better contract at Ford because “there are less problems at Ford.”

Jerome Melillo, a member of the union’s bargaining committee that has been negotiating with Ford, said Ford makes a better target because of its higher profits and because Ford can better meet the union’s job security demands.

Ford out-earned GM $3.3 billion to $2.9 billion in 1986 and in the first half of 1987, in which Ford has already earned another $2.9 billion. Despite its smaller size and slimmer market share, Ford is expected to out-earn GM at least through next year.

The national bargaining committees that have been negotiating with the nation’s two largest auto makers for five weeks were reporting today on progress and company offers to the 300-member GM worker council and a 200-member Ford worker council.

The UAW has rejected two GM offers and expressed displeasure with Ford’s only offer in a month of bargaining. Both three-year contracts expire at midnight Sept. 14. Chrysler Corp.’s contract doesn’t expire until 1988.