Ford Faces Crippling Strike Over Canada Truck Output

Unless Ford agrees to keep its F-Series truck assembly in Ontario, the Canadian Auto Workers served notice Wednesday it could deal the struggling number-two automaker a crippling blow. The CAW’s militant president, Basil (Buzz) Hargrove, warned Ford negotiators it could call a strike at two Windsor (Ont.) plants that supply the company’s assembly plants with 1,130,000 engines a year, including the Triton V-8 that powers most of its F-Series pickups, Ford Expeditions and Excursions and Lincoln Navigators, in reaction to the decision to close the Oakville, Ont., F-150 plant next year.

On the same day that Ford coupled an announcement of its first quarterly profit in 15 months with news of further job and wage reductions, the CAW and Ford held the opening session of contract re-negotiation talks in Toronto. Sparks flew over the Oakville plant closing. Hargrove called the plant mothballing “the most troubling issue the CAW faces today” – to which Ford of Canada’s human resources vice-president Tim Hartmann replied that the decision to shut a plant building the high-selling F-150 “is about eliminating excess capacity, not about quality, cost or productivity.”

Hargrove said the CAW is angry over the fact that the F-150 work being done at Oakville, where 1,500 are involved, is being moved to a plant in Dearborn, Mich. He said the union would change its position about using the Oakville phase out as a strike lever if the work were relocated to another Canadian plant – an unlikely prospect because the Dearborn facilities have been updated to “flex” manufacturing.

Amid a scenario where Ford’s $571 million net profit report for the second quarter was offset by poor marks from new CFO Allan D. Gilmour on Ford’s turnaround progress, Ford employees heard for the first time that the second shift at the Wixom, Mich., Lincoln plant would be cancelled this fall and senior executive ranks would be pared 12 percent by the end of 2003.

The profit report was Ford’s first in 15 months and Ford added a sweetener by confirming that 47,500 white-collar employees would get merit raises averaging 3 percent August 1. The increases have been on hold since April and will not be paid to Ford’s 2,200 executives worldwide.

The CAW and GM opened the round of contract renewal talks Tuesday on a more tranquil note, despite the fact that the number-one automaker will shutter its assembly plant in Ste. Therese, Quebec, next month. GM, likely to be the target for the CAW’s contract demands, offset the Quebec move by committing its Oshawa, Ont., plant to a new Pontiac mid-size car and raising production of the Chevrolet Impala built there. The CAW began talks Thursday with DaimlerChrysler, which reported improved profits for the Chrysler Group despite a second-quarter sales decline. All American-brand contracts expire in Canada after a three-year run on September 17, a year ahead of the UAW’s agreements with the companies for the U.S

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