DETROIT — Ford Motor said Wednesday that its new agreement with the United Automobile Workers union would save at least $500 million a year and, within several years, bring its labor costs into line with what foreign competitors pay their workers in the United States.þþFord said the deal, which U.A.W. members ratified this week, immediately reduces its “all-in” hourly rate, which includes benefits, to $55. þþIt said the figure would continue to decline as more workers took buyouts and as the new-vehicle market recovered, allowing increased production.þþFord’s labor costs now amount to a little more than $60 an hour, including health care for retirees. Labor costs for the so-called transplant automakers, including Toyota and Honda, have been about $49 an hour in the United States and are rising, Ford estimates.þþ“This gets us within the ballpark of where the transplants are,” Joseph R. Hinrichs, Ford’s group vice president for global manufacturing and labor affairs, said. “With the buyouts and with the ability to leverage some of the other tools that are in this agreement, we think we can get there in the next couple of years, on parity with the transplants.”þþThat would be a watershed moment for the union, which fought for decades to ensure that its workers set the standard for pay and benefits in the auto industry.þþ“Wages are being set in Georgetown, not Detroit,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley, referring to Toyota’s huge assembly plant in Georgetown, Ky., which the U.A.W. has not been able to organize.þþFord is the only Detroit automaker not borrowing money from the federal government. General Motors and Chrysler have received $17.4 billion since December and want a total of $39 billion.þþBoth G.M.and Chrysler have reached concessionary deals with the U.A.W. on most issues but are still negotiating on retiree health care. þþA Chrysler vice chairman, Thomas W. LaSorda, warned on Wednesday that the company may close its plants in Canada unless it got sufficient labor concessions. In testimony in Canada, he also asked for government aid and resolution of a tax dispute.þþA U.A.W. vice president, Cal Rapson, said in a letter to local union leaders that economic changes in the G.M. contract followed the pattern of the U.A.W.-Ford agreement but that in other aspects they were “drastically different.” þþMr. Hinrichs called the agreement, which was supported by 59 percent of U.A.W. members who voted in recent weeks, “critical to our future competitiveness.”þþIt suspends inflation-related pay increases and performance bonuses, allows Ford to save as much as $6.5 billion.þþ
Source: NY Times
