[1/5]Bill Ford, CEO of Ford Motor Company, speaks at the Rouge Visitor Center in Dearborn, Michigan, USA on October 16, 2023. Jeff Kowalsky/Ford Motor Co./Handout via Portal. Purchase license rights
DEARBORN, Mich., Oct 16 (Portal) – Ford (FN) Chief Executive Bill Ford on Monday called on the United Auto Workers union to end a 32-day strike and reach a new collective bargaining agreement, warning of the growing impact on the automaker and the US economy.
“We can stop this now,” Ford said of the strike, which expanded to close the Kentucky plant last week. “I call on my UAW colleagues…We must come together to put an end to this bitter round of talks.”
Ford made its appeal in a news conference at the automaker’s historic Rouge Assembly Plant near its headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.
UAW President Shawn Fain responded with a statement warning Ford that the union could “close the rouge” with a strike. “If Ford wants to be the all-American car company, they can pay all-American wages and benefits,” Fain said.
More than 34,000 union members at Ford, General Motors (GM.N) and Chrysler parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI) are on strike, and Ford has furloughed 2,480 more workers, citing the impact of the strike.
Meanwhile, talks between Stellantis and the UAW remained active Monday, sources said.
The strikes have cost the Detroit Three automakers, suppliers, dealers and workers a total of $7.7 billion through Oct. 12, the East Lansing, Mich.-based Anderson Economic Group estimated in a new report Monday.
“We have entered the danger zone for many suppliers,” AEG said in a statement.
Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, said Toyota, Honda, Tesla and other automakers “love this strike because they know the longer it lasts, the better for them.”
In response, Fain said that workers at Tesla and other non-union U.S. automakers “are not the enemy — they are the UAW members of the future.”
The UAW strike at Kentucky Truck, Ford’s largest and most profitable assembly plant in the world, “is hurting tens of thousands of American workers,” Ford said. “If it continues, it will have a major impact on the American economy.”
On Friday, Fain accused Ford of trying to manipulate the talks with inadequate offers and insisted that Ford significantly increase compensation. Ford CEO Jim Farley should “get the big checkbook – the one Ford uses when it wants to spend millions on corporate executives or Wall Street giveaways,” Fain said.
Fain also promised to attack other works at any time.
On Thursday, a senior Ford executive said the automaker was “at the limit” of what it could spend on higher wages and benefits for the UAW. The latest offer includes a 23% wage increase through early 2028, which is higher than what GM or Stellantis have offered. Ford said the UAW’s proposals would have meant bankruptcy if implemented in 2019.
Ford has long portrayed himself and his family’s company as the most pro-union company in the industry, a message he reiterated Monday.
The union called Ford “the enemy,” Ford said. “It should be Ford and the UAW against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and any Chinese companies” that want to enter the U.S. market, he added.
Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said Ford wanted to speak directly to workers.
“He’s doing it to advance the conversation in a way he thinks is more desirable,” Shaiken said, but added: “That probably won’t work.”
He said the UAW could target and pressure Ford because the company has the best offer on the table and the union believes it can get the automaker to make a deal that it could then pressure GM and Stellantis to support. GM and Stellantis did not immediately comment.
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Reporting by Joseph White in Dearborn; Writing by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman. Edited by Franklin Paul, David Gregorio and Grant McCool
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