Ford Workers Ratify Contract

The United Automobile Workers union said Wednesday that the contract had passed, with 63 percent voting “yes” and 37 percent voting “no.” Early on, the deal appeared in danger of being rejected, after several large plants turned it down. But workers who had weighed in since Friday were overwhelmingly in support.

The contract calls for 5,750 new jobs that Ford had not previously announced, and for most workers to receive signing bonuses of $6,000 and profit-sharing checks averaging $3,700 this fall. They also will get bonuses totaling up to $7,000 in later years, but workers earning entry-level wages are the only ones to receive a pay increase.

“This agreement is proof that, by working together with our U.A.W. partners and local communities, we can significantly create new jobs, invest in our plants and people, and make a very positive impact on the U.S. economy,” Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, said in a statement. “Our agreement is fair to our employees and it improves our competitiveness in the U.S.”

Ford has scheduled a conference call with analysts and reporters Thursday to explain the financial implications of the deal. The credit-rating firms Standard Poor’s and Moody’s said recently that they might upgrade Ford if the contract were ratified.

Workers at the last Detroit carmaker to reach a new labor deal, Chrysler, began voting this week. Voting there is scheduled to end Oct. 26.

Labor experts said they expected workers at Chrysler to express less opposition than those at Ford did, given Chrysler’s shakier financial position.

Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., attributed the big swing toward approval at Ford to union leaders realizing that the deal was in peril and stepping up their efforts to show workers how they would benefit. Sentiment also shifted after the leaders began to prepare for a strike, warning that Ford might not return to the bargaining table.

“They got out there and really started to sell the agreement, not as a great agreement but an adequate agreement,” Mr. Chaison said. “The members walked right to the very edge of a cliff and they looked over and decided to take a step back.”

The contract adds only about 70 cents an hour to Ford’s labor costs, which were roughly $59 an hour under the old contract, estimated Brian Johnson, an analyst with Barclays Capital. That is a 1 percent increase, the same amount that General Motors said its new contract, ratified by workers last month, would add.

“The contract, while richer than other firms, does not impose significant new costs on Ford (while a strike would have temporarily cut production and profits),” Mr. Johnson wrote in a report to clients this week. He said a strike could have cost Ford $273 million a day in lost revenue and $71 million a day in profits.

Workers at plants in Chicago and Wayne, Mich., voted against the deal in the first few days, but their “no” votes were more than overcome by strong support from large union locals in Dearborn, Mich., Louisville, Ky. and Kansas City, Mo.

“Our leadership went in the plant and made sure we answered as many questions as we could so they were making an informed decision,” said Jeff Wright, the president of U.A.W. Local 249 in Kansas City. More than 90 percent of voters there supported the deal Sunday after Jimmy Settles, the U.A.W. vice president in charge of negotiations with Ford, flew in to meet with its workers.

Mr. Wright said his members would have liked a better deal, but understood that this was not the time for the union to press harder.

“I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t want a raise,” he said. “It’s going to be good to have this behind us so we can go back to building cars and trucks.”

In the contract, Ford committed itself to invest more than $1 billion in the Kansas City plant, which has 3,700 workers, to make upgrades and build a metal-stamping plant on site. The plant will begin building a new full-size commercial van, called the Transit, in 2013.

It also will get an additional shift of workers to build the F-series pickup truck in 2012, adding perhaps 1,500 workers, Mr. Wright guessed, and the next-generation of the F-series will be built there.

“As the nation’s economy remains stalled and uncertain and its employment rate stagnates, we were able to win an agreement with Ford that will bring auto manufacturing jobs back to the United States from China, Mexico and Japan,” the U.A.W.’s president, Bob King, said in a statement.

Ford and the union have yet to resolve a grievance filed by thousands of workers who assert Ford violated its “equality of sacrifice” promise by restoring bonuses for salaried employees but not for its hourly work force. The grievance is in arbitration, with a hearing scheduled for November, and any payout resulting from that would be on top of the contractual bonuses.

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