Workers’ vote set on union, Ford deal
DETROIT — The United Auto Workers union’s top elected Ford leaders have given their approval to a tentative agreement reached last week between the automaker and the union that would deliver $ 10,000 signing bonuses to workers and $ 9 billion in new U. S. product investments, through which 8,500 jobs would be retained or created.
The new product investments include a commitment by Ford to bring its Ranger midsize pickup back to America and to revive the storied Bronco nameplate. Both vehicles would be built at a suburban Detroit assembly plant that is set to stop making the Ford Focus and C- Max families of vehicles in 2018.
Production of the Bronco is expected to start after the Ranger and no later than 2020, according to a person briefed on the agreement who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“It is one of the richest agreements in the history of UAW- Ford,” UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles said Friday in announcing the new pact.
Settles and UAW President Dennis Williams briefed several hundred Ford elected leaders Monday morning at the UAW- Ford National Program Center in Detroit on the details of the deal. Now that the national council has approved the agreement, it will be sent to the union’s 52,900 Ford members for ratification in a voting process that is expected to take at least a week.
Ford workers will be eligible
for signing bonuses of about $ 8,500 each, as well as other benefits, including profit sharing, a $ 1,500 annual inflation protection bonus and a possible $ 250 annual competitiveness bonus, according to people familiar with the deal.
Additionally, $ 1,500 of the profit sharing amount due would be pulled ahead, so workers would get $ 10,000 upon ratification of the agreement.
Comments on social media were mixed over the weekend. Many commenters said the improvements to Ford’s contract
are still insufficient, but there were also those who said they are satisfied the union got as much as it could.
The Ford agreement is the third national contract the union has reached this year with the Detroit Three. An agreement reached last month with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was ratified last month. An agreement with General Motors was ratified by production workers but rejected by skilled trades workers.
The UAW is holding meetings at plants across the country to determine why 59.5
percent of GM’s skilled trades workers voted no while 58.3 percent of production workers voted in favor.
The UAW’s contract with GM cannot be ratified until the union determines the reasoning behind the skilled trade rejection and whether the two sides need to return to the table to address their specific issues. If the concerns are with the broad monetary aspects of the deal, then UAW leadership can decide to ratify the agreement because 55.4 percent of workers overall voted in favor of the agreement.