The United Auto Workers union is threatening a strike next week at Ford Motor Co.’s largest and most profitable plant over a dispute over local contract language.
The union announced Friday that about 9,000 workers at the Kentucky Trucking plant in Louisville will strike on Feb. 23 if a local contract dispute is not resolved.
If there is a strike, it would be the second time in a year that the union has gone on strike at the vast factory. In October, UAW workers shut down factories during domestic contract negotiations that ended with significant raises for employees.
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The plant is one of two Ford factories in Louisville that make the F-series heavy-duty pickup trucks and the Ford Excursion and Lincoln Navigator large SUVs, all of which are highly profitable vehicles for the company. is.
Workers work on an assembly line at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley, File)
The union says the workers have not had local contracts for five months. Key areas of contention include health and safety issues, minimum staffing levels for factory nurses, ergonomics issues, and the company’s efforts to reduce the number of skilled workers.
A message seeking comment was left with Ford on Friday.
The union says the strike could begin at 12:01 a.m. on February 23. There are 19 other local agreements being negotiated with Ford, and several more with rivals General Motors and Stellantis.
The threat of a strike comes as Ford CEO Jim Farley said at an analyst conference in New York that last fall’s controversial strike changed Ford’s relationship with unions and the automaker The announcement comes a day after the company said it had changed to the point where it was “thinking carefully” about where its future cars would be produced.
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Farley said the Louisville plant was the first truck plant the UAW closed during last year’s strike, even though Ford has made a conscious decision to build all of its pickup trucks in the United States. Rivals General Motors and Stellantis have truck factories in the United States and Mexico.
