Ford commits to new vehicles at U.S. plants

Ford Motor Co. has promised the United Auto Workers that its U.S. plants will receive a flurry of new vehicles, transmissions and other work during the next few years, while refusing so far to allocate new products to two Canadian plants.

Three Ford assembly plants – in Chicago, Louisville, Ky., and Wayne, Mich. – will begin building new vehicles in the next two years, and a commercial van called the Transit Connect that is now imported from Europe will be built at a UAW plant if North American assembly becomes necessary, according to investment commitments contained in a new contract between Ford and the union.

“The company reaffirmed its commitment to the UAW and its manufacturing presence in the U.S.,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford's group vice-president of global manufacturing, said in a letter to UAW officials that is part of the new contract.

The Canadian Auto Workers will seek similar investment promises when contract talks between the union and Ford resume next week, CAW president Ken Lewenza said on Monday.

“We'll ask for the same ratio of support in Canada,” Mr. Lewenza said, although he added that the CAW's analysis of the UAW deal is that promises of new products simply repeat commitments Ford has already made to the U.S. union.

The key demand from the CAW is that Ford maintain 13 per cent of its North American manufacturing footprint in Canada.

Ford refused to do that in talks that broke off last month and has said it has no new products for an assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont., and an engine plant in Windsor, Ont.

The CAW and industry analysts and sources believe Ford will close the St. Thomas plant when it stops building the full-sized Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car in 2011.

In Windsor, Ford has reopened the Essex Engine Plant, but at the nearby Windsor Engine Plant, “all of the component allocations have been made and there isn't any more in the cupboard,” Mr. Lewenza said.

Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. would not comment.

The UAW tactic of securing new investments in return for concessions on wages, cuts in benefits and surrendering the right to strike over wages in the next round of negotiations, mirrors one adopted by Mr. Lewenza's predecessor Buzz Hargrove during the 1990s.

Mr. Hargrove managed to lever promises of new products or large capital investments out of each of the Detroit Three during several rounds of bargaining in the 1990s and this decade. Some of those commitments were broken as markets changed.

The CAW approach of bargaining to win new investments “now makes perfect business and political sense,” given that the UAW has endured more than 100 plant shutdowns in recent years, said Sean McAlinden, executive vice-president of research and chief economist of the Center for Automotive Studies, an industry think tank based in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The UAW contract says that assembling a new Focus compact beginning next year at Michigan Assembly Plant will add 200 jobs, a new vehicle in Chicago will add 300 jobs there, and a new vehicle in Louisville in 2011 will add more jobs.

Among Ford's engine, transmission and components plants, one in Ypsilanti, Mich., will assembly battery packs for hybrid-electric vehicles.

Sources said the Michigan Assembly Plant will also begin assembling the C-Max minivan now imported from Europe, while the vehicle earmarked for Louisville is the Ford Kuga, a compact crossover utility vehicle.