Ford Workers Ratify 3-Year Pact; UAW Will Resume Talks at GM
Union workers at Ford Motor Co. overwhelmingly approved a new three-year labor agreement Wednesday, setting the stage for a showdown over the key issue of job security between the United Auto Workers and Ford’s cross-town rival, General Motors.
The UAW said its members at Ford ratified the new contract, which includes the most comprehensive job guarantees ever won by American auto workers, by a 72% to 28% margin. Ford’s last contract with the UAW, hammered out in 1984, was approved by 65% of the work force.
Ford and the UAW, which refused to release the actual vote totals, will sign the accord next Monday at Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Mich.
Today, the UAW will begin the more difficult task of trying to persuade General Motors to accept a pact containing similar job guarantees for its 370,000 hourly workers. This morning, UAW President Owen Bieber is expected to resume intensive negotiations with GM, where talks have been on hold while the union has focused on Ford.
Soon after the talks start up once more, the union is expected to announce a mid-October strike deadline at GM.
GM Leaders Wary
This week, GM executives have sent out mixed signals on how they will approach the union’s efforts to get the company to follow the Ford contract pattern. Although GM Chairman Roger B. Smith said on Monday that he believes the Ford pact could serve as a “springboard” for an agreement at GM, Robert Stempel, the company’s president, warned at a press briefing Wednesday that GM will need “major changes” before it will agree to a contract like the one at Ford.
Stempel refused to identify what kind of changes he believes GM needs, but it is clear that top management at GM remains concerned over the sweeping nature of the job security provisions in the Ford settlement.
The Ford agreement, hammered out in September, includes a novel new job security program that will, in theory at least, protect the jobs of all 104,000 Ford hourly workers in the United States. It also imposes a stiff moratorium on plant closings for the life of the agreement.
Still, there are apparently loopholes in those provisions that will allow Ford to retain its flexibility.
Under the new job security program, Ford will still have the right to eliminate jobs and send work overseas if it agrees to pay the affected workers their full wages and benefits from a new $500-million fund.
How Layoffs Would Work
Without jobs on the assembly line, those workers would join a pool of laid-off employees who could be called on by Ford for non-traditional work either inside or out of the factory. But once that $500 million is exhausted, Ford would not provide further job security for laid-off employees for the life of the agreement.
Laid-off workers would then have to rely on the auto industry’s traditional supplemental unemployment benefit plan, which provides only partial income protection. The new job security fund will also not cover employment losses that the union and company agree are due directly to slumping car sales.
At the same time, Ford’s moratorium on plant closings exempts two previously announced shutdowns. Such an exemption might be critical for GM, which has announced that it will close about a dozen facilities over the next two years.
