Ford wants to add 10,000 jobs
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co. is discussing adding as many as 10,000 jobs in the U.S. in negotiations with the United Auto Workers union on a new four-year contract, according to three people familiar with the talks. The job-creation discussion is part of high-level negotiations between Ford and UAW President Bob King over wages, benefits, and employment gains in the new contract and is still subject to change, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing internal
“Ford, which is the most advanced in its recovery, is a natural for this kind of job creation.” General Motors Co. agreed to add or retain 6,400 jobs in a tentative agreement it reached with the UAW on Sept. 16. GM’s 48,500 hourly workers ratified that contract with 65 percent of production workers and 63 percent of skilled-trades workers voting for it, the union said today. “Two years ago, GM and Chrysler were hanging by a thread when President Obama stepped in and invested federal funds to help turn the companies and the U.S. auto industry around, protecting the auto supplier base and keeping good-paying jobs in America,” King said today in a statement. Ford avoided the bankruptcies and bailouts that befell GM and Chrysler Group LLC. Fusion Production Ford now produces the Fusion at a factory in Hermosillo, Mexico, which employs 3,335 workers, according to the automaker’s website. Sales of the Fusion in the U.S., where it is Ford’s top- selling car, rose 16 percent this year to 168,929 models through August. Last year, Ford sold 219,219 Fusions in the U.S., according to researcher Autodata of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. King met yesterday with John Fleming, Ford’s chief of manufacturing and labor affairs, to discuss new work the automaker may be willing to put into U.S. plants, one of the people said. King shifted to Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford last week after talks faltered with Fiat SpA-controlled Chrysler, which said it extended its contract to Oct. 19. “We have accelerated our talks,” Goddard, the union’s Ford bargaining committee co-chairman, said in a telephone recording late Sept. 26. “We are optimistically hopeful we will have good news for our membership by the end of the week.” UAW Chief ‘Confident’ Marcey Evans, a Ford spokeswoman, declined to comment. “We’re not commenting on the details of talks,” said Michele Martin, a UAW spokeswoman. King is “confident that we are on track to secure an economic package that our membership deserves,” Anderson Robinson, recording secretary of the union’s Ford bargaining committee, said in a recorded message yesterday. He added that King and UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles met “for several hours” with Ford bargainers yesterday. Hiring entry-level workers would help Ford lower its labor costs because they start at about $14 an hour, half what senior employees make, Shaiken said. Ford has said it has fewer than 100 entry-level workers among its hourly workforce, the fewest of the U.S. automakers. “There’s little question that the entry-level workers are accelerating the hiring process,” Shaiken said. “That’s a key part of the UAW strategy. It creates more jobs.” GM Agreement The GM agreement calls for boosting starting pay of entry- level workers to at least $14.78 an hour from $14. That wage rises to as much as $19.28 an hour by 2015 from a previous maximum of $16.23. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/09/28/bloomberg_articlesLS91L56S972C.DTL#ixzz1ZLuJ1tfC
