2y ago

Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford calls on autoworkers to end strike, says company's future is at stake

apnews.com Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford calls on autoworkers to end strike, says company's future is at stake

Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman Bill Ford called on autoworkers to come together and end a monthlong strike that he says could cost the company the ability to invest in the future.

Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman Bill Ford called on autoworkers to come together to end a monthlong strike that he says could cost the company the ability to invest in the future.

In a rare speech during contract talks in the company’s hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, Ford said high labor costs could limit spending to develop new vehicles and invest in factories. “It’s the absolute lifeblood of our company. And if we lose it, we will lose to the competition. America loses. Many jobs will be lost,” said the great grandson of company founder Henry Ford.

The company, he said, builds more vehicles in America and has more United Auto Workers employees than any company, which has increased its costs in a highly competitive industry.

Ford has 57,000 UAW workers compared with 46,000 at GM and 43,000 at Stellantis. “Many of our competitors moved jobs to Mexico as we added jobs here in the U.S.,” Ford said.

BrainWorms @lemm.ee

Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford calls on autoworkers to end strike, says company's future is at stake

apnews.com /article/bill-ford-executive-chairman-uaw-contract-talks-27b702b36599bf1706e1c692ccfda1c6

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Ford Motor Co.'s second-quarter profit more than tripled to $1.92 billion versus a year ago (source)
Revenue rose 12% to $44.95 billion
Kinda hard to drum up sympathy for the company when it's raking in almost $2 billion in profit per quarter. Yes, Ford is burning about $1billon per quarter on EVs right now. That's not something the workers should be financing. That's money the company is investing to be viable in the future. That sucks for the shareholders; but, they are the ones who will reap any benefits of that investment and they should be the ones eating the cost.
- they are the ones who will reap any benefits of that investment and they should be the ones eating the cost.
  They seem to have forgotten that "The investor takes the risk", sometimes its not all fst dividends.

Sounds like the executives should take a pay cut.
- Realistically executive salaries probably won't cover a salary increase across the workforce foe the whole country. Not doing a stock buy back just might though.
  
  Oh, i really hope someone does the math on this one.
  
  The issue is the massive delta they've created. If it was 2to1 it wouldn't be such a sticking point.
  
  Por que no los dos?

His salary in 2022 was 17.3 million and that’s down from 18.7 million in 2021. They could have paid 200 employees 85k a year instead of one pointless executive. So maybe the executives are the reason for the company going under.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2023/03/31/heres-how-much-ford-ceo-jim-farley-made-last-year/70067820007/#:~:text=Bill%20Ford%20Jr.%27s%20total,%2421.5%20million%20in%20direct%20compensation.
- That's just salary.
  His other compensations, benefits, and free services like company jets and private dining, provide a very significant increase of their own.
  C-level compensation is never merely in pay, there's a whole incredibly expensive ecosystem to support as well.
  And, in addition to his surprising decision to pay himself more than his predecessor, he was a major stock holder before he took over the position, so he's getting dividends and stockholder equity as well.
  Heyyyy, wait a minute.
  Didn't he decide to do a stock buyback with company funds? 3.5 billion worth over the past decade? $400 million in the last year?
  Weren't those things considered the kind of market manipulation that helped cause the Great Depression?
  
  That sounds like $3.5B of equity that could be leveraged to develop new vehicles, build new factories, and pay employees a fair wage.
  
  Not that I'm remotely defending corporate bloat, but it is important to do the math and make sure we're fighting the right battles. 3.5B sounds like a lot, but Ford has around 175k US employees, if you divide that 3.5B over the ten years over the 175k employees, that's only an extra $2000/employee/yr. $2000/yr is not going to help a factory worker's future medical debt nor allow someone to afford a house or a family that couldn't $2k ago. One could probably even with a straight face make the argument that 3.5b in stock buybacks sets Ford up for future sustainability, and ensures they can keep the bulk of those workers in the US that probably could be exported for cheaper.
  What we need back is the culture of taking care of corporations that take care of you when you retire. Pensions and stock options for regular employees.

Y'know, he could always just AGREE TO THEIR TERMS! The company being at stake is the entire point of unionizing.
- I also think he should, but he says that if he did, the company would lose to competition.
  
  He says that. But he also just said that stupid thing in the headline, so ...
  
  Then their business model needs some TLC. Those suits need to earn their high wages snd come up with better plans.
  
  That argument is uncompelling when the union is striking their competition as well.

"This strike is preventing my company from having a future"
Umm. Yes. Yes it is. That's the entire point you complete idiot.
- "You should all know this strike has been highly effective. Which is why you should stop it! Immediately!

Isn't it he who has the power to end the strike?
- And probably the one with millions in bonuses at the end of the strike.

Ford spent almost $500 million on stock buybacks in 2022. GM spent around $3 billion. Maybe priorities needs to be adjusted.

Sounds like Bill needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
- But what about all the work his grest grandfather did to build the company? Shouldn't he be entitled to live large off that man's work by virtue of his birthright?
  So what if these workers who actually build the product that Ford sells can't afford food or shelter. This man struggled to be born into the correct family, and he's entitled to his fortune!

Boo hoo rich guy, take care of your fucking employees
- Old codger born with a silver spoon asks blue collars to make sacrifices yet again.
  
  Silver spoon? I don't think even calling him a gold spoon would be enough. Maybe diamond spoon.

The workers:

Lmao, talk to any former ford employee and they'll probably show the middle finger to the entire board if they could.
They run the layoff cycle literally every other year to cut costs whenever sales even hint at slowing down, all while paying CEOs massive money.
"Yeah we moved to mexico less than our competitors so that makes us better"

Oh boohoo Bill.
But he also said Ford is paying CEO Jim Farley $21 million per year when starting pay for Ford factory workers is up only about $3 per hour from when he started with the company 31 years ago.
Ford’s offer of a 23% general wage increase barely covers inflation over the last three or four years, said Applebee, 59.
- That is fucking insane. $3 per hour wage increase in 31 years?!
  
  Starting pay. A lot of unions have fucked new people to get better deals for people with longer tenure. Someone who started 30 years ago is already eligible for full retirement and got way more than $3/hour in raises.

Sounds to me like he has plenty of power to end the strike, he can see the concrete requirements from the workers. Grant them, in full, strike ends, company safe. Sounds simple Mr. 21 Million plus perks.

Ford does not give a shit if an employee dies. Sucks doesn't it?
- They don't care if their customers, die either. Pretty sure they got caught doing a cost benefit analysis on fixing defective Pintos vs paying the wrongful death suits and deciding it was cheaper to let people keep dying.
  
  A source for the events you mention

Well then Ford make a decision. Do you want a company or not, because you can absolutely remain profitable whilst paying your employees properly. Without employees to do the labor to make the products you sell you have nothing, so it seems like the best course of action would be to make sure the folks ensuring your business has product to sell should be properly motivated to continue to want to provide their time and labor. Their time is the same as the Csuite's time, you cannot get it back, so they deserve to get paid properly.

Any business that can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage shouldn’t remain in business.

Ford C-suite took home $71 million in 2021 (most recent year I could find data). They could give each worker a $1000+ bonus and still walk away with $10 million. Not that $1000 is enough for each worker, but just to illustrate that there is a ton of money floating around, they just don't want the workers to have it. It's not future investment they're worried about (they get massive tax breaks for all these new facilities, and new car designs are all being done by salaried white collar engineers anyway), it's shareholder profits. Ford doesn't want to lower their reported annual profits by increasing their worker costs.
Fuck shareholders, and fuck the C-suite for looking out for their interests instead of their workers. They don't actually produce anything. The workers are the real company asset here, not some Wall Street goon who bought stock.
- Not to mention if the company goes over it's how it's supposed to be.
  If a company isn't working well it's union should take it to bankruptcy in hopes that a better companie will fill the niche.
  They say that about nature all the time "who care if some species are dying, others will fill it's space".
  Now I say it about these companies they run

Ford should just get rid of their C-level executive team.

Maybe you should make your workers whole then. Sounds like that’s a you problem not a union problem.

Then agree to every single one of their demands.
Saving companies from a striking workforce is incredibly easy.

Oh no! The grandson of one of Hitler’s largest US supporters might lose money. How awful. So sad. Fuck Ford.
Ford, GM, and Stellantis are lucky they even exist. The government should have let them collapse and did in 2008.
- So I remember listening to those hearings on C-Span radio back in the day. Ford was asked if they were asking for handouts in China and Mexico and the response was literally, "No, we are profitable in those countries." Which I thought was pretty shitty to expect the government to bail out a company that had profitable divisions.
  But also Ford was the only company that mortgaged their brand and logo on proper loans instead of from a bailout from the government, which forced Ford to make sure they fixed their business plan in the US which they did for a while.
- Judging someone by what their great grandfather did or who he supported is so reductive it makes your point worthless.
- To be fair, his grandfather paid a livable wage (plus some probably). Fordism isn't ideal, but it does predicate itself on paying workers enough so that they can afford to buy your product, making you more money. It's better than not doing that.
- Lose money? No, just make a little bit less.

Oh yeah well that's fine with me

Decent ownership would sacrifice most of of their profits to see the company through difficult periods, as was done prior to the Jack Welch/Ronald Reagan corporate culture sociopathification half a century ago when the oligarchs decided to abandon any mutual respect for their workers and exploit everything away from their labor force, after sabotaging labor power legislatively of course.
That doesn't happen anymore though. Bill Ford will never encounter a moment of concern about how he'll afford groceries or a mortgage, regardless of the outcome of this strike. Fuck these capitalist manipulators, and fuck this country for bowing to the desires of the haves while ignoring the needs of the have nots.
Why should the laborers, America's paycheck to paycheck losers, care about the future of this exploitative country's ability to remain as it is, systematically fucking them over? Why would they want their children to be subject to this rigged system as it currently is?
If the laborers weren't propagandized from birth by the capitalists to believe this rigged economy to be the only way, they'd be actively burning this crooked place down to the ground.

Oh wait, you’re serious?

That's the whole fucking point, you idiot.
- This should be the top comment.

Translation: stahhp being mean you're hurting my innocent bank account!
- Translation: Get back to work, peasants! Won't you think of how your actions are affecting your lords?

I bet plantation owners made similar speeches.

Have you… Considered compensating your workers fairly?

Good, keep it at stake.

The only unskilled labor is executives.

His speech read more like a threat than anything else.

Oh no... anyways.
Fuck executives. Everything they touch goes to shit.

Oh no, not Ford, oh fuck, what will we all do?
-_-
- People with a small penis will just have to buy a pickup truck from a different company?

A single AI could theoretically replace every single C Suite executive in the world.
- Most of them could be just replaced with a email rule

Lol fuck this guy. He could end the strike if he weren't a greedy rich bastard.

That's a stunning admission, mighty close to admitting straight to the workers' faces that they are winning. What stronger sign could there be that holding the line is exactly the right thing to do?

So?
If you can't pay your workers a living wage, you don't fucking deserve to exist as a company.
Cry more, capitalist.
- “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” - FDR

Not at stake enough to meet their demands I suppose

Which stage of grief is bargaining?

I don't really see how this ends any other way than them sending most of the jobs to Mexico.
- It could also end with bankruptcy. It happened to a lot of us based suppliers.
- And every company that leaves they should be taxed at a rate to pay the unemployment benefits. The only wayw to prevent companies from leaving is to have the most educated population and to tax all imports at a rate that will pay for social investment programs.

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