Posted on 08/01/2003 4:13:41 PM PDT by Brian S
DETROIT, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co. hopes to eliminate about 21,000 jobs or 20 percent of its blue-collar work force over the life of a new collective bargaining agreement with the United Auto Workers union, sources familiar with the company's plans said this week.
When it unveiled a multiyear turnaround plan to recover from a deepening financial crisis in January last year, the world's second largest automaker said it planned to cut about 12,000 hourly jobs, nearly all represented by the UAW.
But sources close to the company said it was now looking at shrinking even further its blue-collar ranks, which include workers at its former auto parts subsidiary Visteon Corp. . Ford hopes to cut roughly 5 percent a year over the duration of a four-year contract with the UAW.
The cuts would be achieved through attrition -- meaning that Ford would not replace workers as they quit or retire -- and the company's total blue-collar work force would be cut to around 73,000 employees from 94,000, the sources said.
Anne Marie Gattari, a Ford spokeswoman, declined to comment on the nature of any planned cutback, which could complicate the contract talks that Ford and other Detroit automakers opened with the UAW two weeks ago.
But Ford's plan would be bolstered by the fact that the company has a large number of factory workers who are at or near completing 30 years of service with the automaker, when they will be eligible for retirement.
At Ford's assembly plant in Lorain, Ohio, for example, almost one-third of the work force is eligible for retirement.
Though Ford's push to cut jobs through attrition could represent a major challenge for the UAW, which has been hurt by the loss of more than half its membership since 1979, it is not without precedent.
The union allowed General Motors Corp. to use attrition to scale back its work force repeatedly under contracts over the past decade, and more than 17,000 factory jobs were eliminated at GM alone under terms of the current UAW contract with little or no protest from the union's leadership.
The UAW negotiated one of the richest contracts in U.S. labor history in 1999, at a time when GM, Ford and the Chrysler arm of DaimlerChrysler were all coming off record profits.
But those profits have long since vanished, and many analysts and labor experts believe the UAW will endorse major cost-cutting efforts at Ford and its cross-town rivals as a trade-off for keeping generous health care and retirement benefits.
At Ford, in particular, company officials have said the UAW will have to lift a four-year ban on U.S. plant closings so it can proceed with its restructuring plan by eliminating excess production capacity.
No,it's not. They get paid to use their body. Visit a plant and talk to some workers and I'm sure you'll change your mind.
If an assembly worker assembles say, 60 engines per hour, and tightens 3 bolts , that's 1800 times a day (most work mandatory 10 hour days) that the worker's shoulder or hand is absorbing the torque from the gun. Of course those 3 bolts would only be a small part of the work done in one minute.
It's not a pro-union thing for me, I think autoworkers work hard for their money.
The four Fords and one Lincoln I've owned in my lifetime have all been exceptionally reliable and economical vehicles. Perhaps Ford should just dump all their expensive American union workers and move all their production to china to improve their bottom line
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.