Changing Gears

The mood of several workers at Ford’s engine plant in Brook Park, Ohio, sums up the mixed feelings of the company’s workers nationwide: In a tentative contract agreement Ford struck with the United Auto Workers union last week, workers feel they’re not getting enough back to compensate for concessions in previous contracts.

The contract is faltering in early voting across the country, with 54.6 percent of voters so far rejecting the deal. Thursday afternoon, the UAW Ford Department said 3,256 workers had voted yes and 3,915 had voted no. Voting on the four-year deal is expected to end Tuesday.

Results from the Cleveland-area Brook Park plant were not yet known, but an early survey of workers showed results titled against the deal, and anger toward bonuses given to executives had risen.

“I gave up $20,000 a year,” between a lack of raises and moving from skilled trades to production,” Erich Ockuly, a Brook Park worker, told The Plain Dealer. “All that so Alan Mulally could make $24 million.”

Elsewhere, employees at a Chicago Ford plant overwhelmingly rejected the contract. UAW Local 551 reported Thursday morning that 77 percent of 2,317 votes cast went against the agreement, which offered a $6,000 signing bonus but no cost-of-living adjustment. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has endorsed the contract, saying it would create 1,100 new jobs in Chicago, according to our partner station WBEZ.

In Detroit, voting was more mixed. Sixty-six percent of production workers and 64.5 percent of skilled-trade workers voted yes on the deal, according to UAW Local 228, which represents 1,740 hourly employees at Ford’s axle plant in Sterling Heights. Earlier this week, Ford workers at a stamping plant in Wayne, as 51.5 percent rejected the contract, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Changing Gears senior editor Micki Maynard discussed the flagging support of the Ford contract during a Wednesday evening appearance on PBS NewsHour.

“The Ford workers, I think they feel they deserve more,” she said. “Their company didn’t take a federal bailout, and it really isn’t in bad shape at all. It’s in the most profitable position of any of the car companies.”

That is reflected in the contract agreement: Ford workers are faced with a better deal than their counterparts at General Motors and Chrysler. Ford workers would receive a $6,000 signing bonus, while GM workers will receive a $5,000 bonus; Chrysler workers would receive $1,750 upon ratification and $1,750 after the company hits certain financial targets.

(Here’s a handy chart that compares the basics of the three UAW contracts, courtesy of the Free Press).

If Ford workers reject the contract Tuesday, the company could lock out workers, the union could strike or the two sides could return to the negotiating table.