DETROIT – UAW President Shawn Fain discussed how Ford’s most prominent plant got disrupted when nearly 9,000 workers walked out.
The walkout occurred Wednesday (Oct. 11) afternoon, and Fain told Local 4 that it was time to get a deal done as they had reached day 27 of the strike.
“This is about the membership,” said Fain. “It’s not about me or the executive board. This is about the members, and it’s about the working class, not just in this country but in this world. Everyone’s going through the same thing. Profits have skyrocketed. COs and everyone is doing great, but the working class people keep falling behind, and it’s our time to change this and turn it around.”
The unprecedented walkout effectively shut down the plant, which is located in Louisville and is Ford’s largest facility.
The Kentucky plant builds the Ford Super Duty line of pickups, Ford Expeditions, and the Lincoln Navigator. The automaker said the vehicles produced at the Kentucky Truck Plant generate roughly $25 billion annually.
Fain said striking the massive plant wasn’t a drastic move.
“I don’t call striking the Kentucky plant a drastic move,” Fain said. “We have tried, and we have been very clear from day one, and we are going to do things differently in the UAW now. It’s a new UAW, and we expect them to come to the table and get these things done early. They chose not to bargain for almost seven weeks, and they didn’t really get serious until the last week. So, I don’t really want to call this a drastic thing. We’ve been patient, and we have tried to do the right thing. We’ve tried to escalate things on a calculated manner, but at this point, two weeks later, we’ve gotten to this point, and it’s unexcitable, so we have to do what we have to do.”
“No bucks, no trucks sounds like a chant of the membership that works hard down there at Ford and all of this country,” Fain said. “We have been at the table every day. The vice presidents, the bargaining committee, and we’ve been working so hard to bring an equitable and fair agreement to the membership, so honestly, they asked us to meet tonight. We went to meet, and they gave us the same offer that they gave us from two weeks ago, which was really no progress. We really felt like we had no option but to escalate it. We’ve had members out there for 30 days, almost on the line, and our members deserve their fair share. These corporations have made billions and billions of dollars over the last decade, and we want our fair share. Our members and the working class of this country deserve economic and social justice, so we had to make a decision tonight, and so we did.”
More: Here’s how many autoworkers have been laid off by Big Three amid UAW strike
Fain said the UAW wanted to get a deal done by Sept. 14, but unfortunately, the Detroit Big Three did not want to get a deal done, which has led to them now hitting Ford’s biggest plant.
“Each of the three has an offer on the table, and each of the three has different nuisances to it. So I’m sure Ford feels like there’s is the best, but regardless of which ones are on the table right now, it’s not where our membership needs to be. When these corporations made a quarter trillion dollars in profit over the last decade, co-pay has skyrocketed, and car prices have skyrocketed, our members went backward. So we got to do what we got to do, and unfortunately, the company chose to take this route. We wanted to have an agreement by the deadline of Sept. 14, but unfortunately, the companies don’t want to get there. And this is about the membership, and it has always been about the membership, and it will always be about the membership.”
Ford issued a statement on the work stoppage, calling the UAW move “Grossly irresponsible.”
“The decision by the UAW to call a strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant is grossly irresponsible but unsurprising given the union leadership’s stated strategy of keeping the Detroit 3 wounded for months through “reputational damage” and “industrial chaos.”
Ford made an outstanding offer that would make a meaningful positive difference in the quality of life for our 57,000 UAW-represented workers, who are already among the best compensated hourly manufacturing workers anywhere in the world. In addition to our offer on pay and benefits, Ford has been bargaining in good faith this week on joint venture battery plants, which are slated to begin production in the coming years.
The UAW leadership’s decision to reject this record contract offer – which the UAW has publicly described as the best offer on the table – and strike Kentucky Truck Plant, carries serious consequences for our workforce, suppliers, dealers and commercial customers.
Kentucky Truck is Ford’s largest plant and one of the largest auto factories in America and the world. The vehicles produced at the Louisville-based factory – the F-Series Super Duty, the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator – generate $25 billion a year in revenue. In addition to affecting approximately 9,000 direct employees at the plant, this work stoppage will generate painful aftershocks – including putting at risk approximately a dozen additional Ford operations and many more supplier operations that together employ well over 100,000 people.
This decision by the UAW is all the more wrongheaded given that Ford is the only automaker to add UAW jobs since the Great Recession and assemble all of its full-size trucks in America.”
Daniel Barbossa, Ford Communications
Fain will go live on social media at 10 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 13 to provide the latest updates. It can be watched on ClickOnDetroit and Local 4+.