Posted on 08/17/2023 7:36:57 PM PDT by dynachrome
Ford CEO Jim Farley joins "Barron's Roundtable" to discuss the debate on electric vs. gas cars, the auto company's growth and approach to the auto industry, and reacts to Warren Buffett's comments on investing in the industry.
Ford is readying plans for its white-collar salaried employees to step in and keep parts flowing in the instance that its blue-collar union workers walk off the job next month amid threats that the United Auto Workers are preparing to strike at Detroit's Big Three automakers.
The Detroit Free Press first reported that Ford is holding meetings with salaried workers like engineers to coordinate and prepare them for filling in at warehouses and operating forklifts to assure dealerships and customers that they are still able to obtain vehicle parts if operations shut down.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
Sucks to be “at will” and “exempt”.
That won’t end well.
All those parts orders?
is that for all those ev’s sitting idle on the lots, or for those broke down in the garage lucky enough to have not erupted in flames?
Que the Benny Hill music.
I’ve worked in the warehouse and in corporate and I believe that the whse people could run the office, but there is no way that the corporate a-holes could run a warehouse/manufacturing. Or even make a box for that case.
The overpaid thinker who daintly clips his fingernails all day long will freak out. All the arse kissers won’t know how to look up. Or how to drive a pallet jack.
You can’t just hop on a forklift and operate it safely without training. There is more to it than just driving. Back in my 20’s I needed to pass a training course and get a license before I could operate it for insurance purposes with the company.
Yeah there is no way someone who manages material acquisition and production schedules would be smart enough to move pallets from one location to another
Takes a union employee to know how to spend the morning hitting up the supply cage for work gloves.
I don’t know what it’s like at Ford or really at any manufacturer these days since I am retired. But my first job out of college was with the world’s largest manufacturer of electronic connectors and associated crimping and application machinery. I worked in Engineering Systems as a white collar employee in IT. I loved going out on factory floors and working, so did the engineers because they designed everything on the floor. We had good relationships with factory workers because our job was to make them more productive. We did their jobs so we knew exactly what they did for a living and they were pretty open about how they really did their jobs (not by the manual) and had ideas how things could be improved. But then it wasn’t a unionized shop.
Good story. Thanks for sharing.
“The Show Must Go On!!”
That's true. But this is Ford we are talking about. If someone is operating a forklift and dumps a heavy load on a co-worker by not balancing it correctly and und up killing him, I doubt they will be covered by insurance. I am sure in their policy it requires proper operator training in the equipment.
Give us what we want or we will quit and kill your business. How is that different from extortion?
When UPS went on the big strike in the 90s an engineer I worked with there was told to “wear his browns” (they all have to have the uniform at home) and report to work to deliver packages. He did as he was told but said his productivity score was 14% compared with a trained delivery driver. But it didn’t matter much because the sorting hubs were all but shut down because the white collar people didn’t know how to run the machines.
First real work for some of them.
All a great reason why i will never buy a UAW made product.
Yes, “back in the day” engineers and technicians talked with each other and THE ENGINEERS KNEW THE TECHNICIANS’ JOBS so they designed with serviceability in mind.
When that broke down we moved from a “repair” mode to a “replacment” mode.
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