Ford Employees Approve UAW Contract

A fresh contract for about 40,000 unionized employees was approved at Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) by a large margin, overcoming some opposition against the contract among a few union members of the United Auto Workers union.

The votes casted by the production employees in favor of the contract was 63 percent and 37 percent against the contract. The votes made in favor of the contract by the skilled trades’ employees were stronger with 65 percent to 35 percent.

The UAW contract in the beginning received a mediocre response among employees who wanted a larger share of Ford’s healthy profit. The contract was likely to see a defeat last week at several plants. However as a large number of votes came in favor of the contract over the weekend, it changed the entire scene.

Todd Dunn, local 862 president in Louisville, Ky. Said that there were no attempts made to explain to the employees early on and they just answered questions put across, however the last union locals to vote knew what they were voting for. Adding on he said that an informed decision was made by the union workers based on the knowledge they possessed about the contract.

Bob King, president of Union Auto Workers, had a clear victory. A concessions filled contract was reject by the Ford Employees about two years ago, which had been recommend for Ford’s membership by the Union’s leadership. Mr. King at that time was head for union’s Ford segment.

Robert Clark, retired labor negotiator at ford said that he agrees to the assessment made by union leadership stating that the early votes casted were based on emotion and later votes came based on better information about the contract.

This is the only second such workers contract agreement that has been approved by GM, Ford and Chrysler. The agreement is also the first since the 2008 recession after which the sales of Pickup trucks and SUVs dropped and General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC resorted to a bailout led by the government following leading to a restructuring.

A less generous accord was ratified by employees at General Motors earlier this fall. At Chrysler the ratification process had just started and is expected to end his month. The pressure relating the contract must have been greater at Ford as the employees have the right to strike if the contract was shot down. However, employees at Chrysler and General Motors gave up the option of holding a strike till 2015 as part of restructurings.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.