As of Sunday evening, 62 percent of votes cast were in favor of the four-year deal, a reversal from Friday morning, when just 49 percent supported it. With only a handful of plants yet to weigh in on the contract, it was passing by a margin of 5,800 votes, according to an update released through the union’s official Facebook page dedicated to negotiations with Ford.
The lack of a wage increase was responsible for many of the “no” votes among workers at Ford, the only one of the Detroit carmakers that did not file for bankruptcy protection in 2009 or accept a federal bailout. Wages have been frozen since 2003.
General Motors and Chrysler workers gave up their right to strike under the terms of the government loans those companies received.
Unless workers at the remaining plants reject the deal in overwhelming numbers, the proposed contract will win approval on Tuesday, when voting is scheduled to finish. That would end the only possibility of a strike during this year’s round of labor negotiations in Detroit and allow union leaders to turn their attention to building support for a less-generous contract with Chrysler.
“It’s not over till the last vote, but approval looks likely at this point,” Harley Shaiken, a professor of labor relations at the University of California, Berkeley, said Sunday. “The early locals voted their anger, and the later locals voted based on what their alternatives would be.”
Mr. Shaiken said he also expected the Chrysler agreement to pass, because the terms of that company’s 2009 bankruptcy mean a rejection could lead to the contract’s being settled in binding arbitration, a process seen as less favorable to workers.
About 65 percent of G.M. workers voted to ratify their new contract last month.
The biggest U.A.W. chapter at Ford, Local 600 in Dearborn, Mich., favored the deal by 62 percent to 38 percent. The local represents 14 percent of Ford’s 41,000 workers, and its resistance to concessions that Ford sought in 2009 helped assure their defeat. Also on Sunday, 90 percent of voters at a plant in Kansas City, Mo., supported the contract.
Those results, on top of overwhelming support for the deal from workers in St. Paul, and three other Michigan plants since Friday, overcame opposition at three large plants that were among the first to vote last week.
The intensity of Ford workers’ opinions toward the contract has been apparent in that at least 80 percent of workers have voted at most of the locals where results were released. In contrast, many of the large G.M. locals reported turnout of less than 50 percent.
Chrysler workers will begin voting this week on a separate deal that follows a similar framework as the Ford deal but provides smaller bonuses, among other differences. Voting there is expected to conclude Oct. 26.
The Ford contract, which calls for creating 5,750 jobs that the company had not previously announced, is the most financially generous of the three deals. It calls for signing bonuses of $6,000 for most workers this year and bonuses in later years totaling at least $6,000.
G.M. workers get $5,000 immediately and at least $3,000 more in subsequent years. Chrysler, meanwhile, agreed to pay only $1,750 upon ratification; its workers would get another $1,750 when the company meets certain financial targets and additional bonuses based on vehicle quality and other factors.
All three companies agreed to increase their pay scale for entry-level workers by several dollars an hour, but workers hired before 2007 will not receive raises.
Union officials at Ford plants began preparing for a strike after the early voting was unexpectedly negative last week. They warned workers that Ford could refuse to return to the bargaining table if the deal was turned down, leading to a potentially lengthy walkout or lockout.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f2dd1d7c219a5dfba3892f0a603b9f8d
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