Ford Workers Authorize Strike
DETROIT (AP) - Workers at a Ford Motor Co. plant near Kansas City, MO., have voted to let their union leaders call a strike against the company.
United Auto Workers members at Ford's Claycomo plant voted 3,049 to 18 in favor of authorizing a strike, local union President Jeff Wright said in an e-mail Monday.
The vote is standard procedure in contract negotiations and doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a strike. UAW President Bob King has said he's not thinking about a work stoppage and is optimistic both sides can reach a deal without one.
Workers at the Claycomo plant voted Thursday and Saturday, and were among the first in the company to cast ballots. All Ford workers represented by the UAW will vote on the same issue by Sept. 2.
Contracts between the union and Ford, General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC expire on Sept. 14. Negotiations with all three carmakers are under way.
All three companies are now making money, and King has said workers should share in the newfound profits. He also said the companies must have labor costs that are competitive with Asian rivals, mainly Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. King also said he'll focus on profit sharing in the talks instead of the traditional hourly pay raises. He said the paychecks will have to be much larger than workers got earlier this year.
Technically the UAW can strike only at Ford over the issue of wages. Strikes over pay are prohibited at GM and Chrysler under terms of both companies' government bailouts. Ford avoided bankruptcy by taking out massive private loans.
The negotiations are the first since Chrysler and GM accepted government aid and emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. The contracts will set wages and benefits for 111,000 UAW members nationwide and pay levels for manufacturing jobs in the automobile and other industries.
Ford has the highest total labor cost in the industry at $58 per hour, compared with Toyota's $55, according to the Center for Automotive Research. All three companies want to lower their costs to get closer to the competition.
Many Ford workers want concessions made in 2007 and 2009 restored, and they are angry that white-collar workers got bonuses this year and raises last year while factory workers gave up pay increases. They're also unhappy about CEO Alan Mulally's $26.5 million pay package for 2010.
Ford factory workers got $5,000 profit-sharing checks earlier this year. The company made $4.95 billion in the first half of the year
