The United Auto Workers is still talking with Ford to ensure the automaker remains competitive with domestic rivals reorganised with federal funding, a union official was quoted as saying.
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“We are always in meetings with Ford,” UAW vice president Bob King told Reuters at a Ford facility after US energy secretary Steven Chu announced that the automaker would receive almost US$5.9bn from the first wave of financing from a government programme intended to offset the high costs automakers face meeting recently announced federal fuel economy standards.
“Are those formal negotiations?” King was quoted as saying. “You could say yes or no.”
King, who led a round of concession talks at Ford earlier this year, said it was uncertain whether the talks would result in a formal set of contract changes that would have to be taken to UAW workers for ratification.
Reuters noted the comments by the UAW’s chief Ford negotiator were the first update on union talks with the automaker since its members ratified a set of deeper concessions for bankrupt rivals GM and Chrysler in deals brokered by the Obama administration.
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By GlobalDataFord, the only US automaker to avoid bankruptcy and reorganisation supervised by the Obama administration, had previously estimated the concessions ratified by the union last March would save it about $500m a year.
GM and Chrysler have also won agreements that prohibit the union from striking when negotiations on a new contract begin in 2011. The news agency said some analysts have suggested those provisions, and more favourable terms on payments due to a union-affiliated trust fund for retiree healthcare, could put Ford at a disadvantage compared with GM and Chrysler.
The most recent agreement with the UAW reduced average wages and benefits for UAW hourly workers to about US$55 per hour this year, down from over $70 per hour during contract renegotiations two years ago. That is expected to drop to about $50 per hour by 2011, roughly what Japanese automakers will be paying their non union US factory workers.
“We’re going to continue working together,” King said of Ford. “Whether that means a new contract or not, at this point, I don’t know. But more importantly, we’re working together to keep jobs in the United States of America and we understand that to do that long-term we’ve got to be part of building profitable vehicles.”
King said the UAW was committed to seeing Ford succeed with its effort to build small cars profitably in the United States, an effort which, Reuters noted, Detroit automakers had earlier this decade dismissed as unrealistic, in part because of high labour costs.
“We all know that our long-term security, our pensions, our healthcare are dependent on a profitable Ford Motor Co,” King said. “I think the partnership we have means that we can build small cars profitably in the US.”
Ford has targeted 2011 for a return to profitability after posted losses totalling $30bn for the last three full years.
