(WXYZ) — In a social media post, the United Auto Workers have announced that workers at Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant are joining the Stand Up Strike.
The post reads as follows:
BREAKING: The 8,700 UAW members at Ford’s iconic and extremely profitable Kentucky Truck Plant have joined the Stand Up Strike after Ford refuses to make further movement in bargaining.
Workers are walking off the job right now.
STAND UP!
“We have been crystal clear, and we have waited long enough, but Ford has not gotten the message,” said UAW President Shawn Fain in a news release. “It’s time for a fair contract at Ford and the rest of the Big Three. If they can’t understand that after four weeks, the 8,700 workers shutting down this extremely profitable plant will help them understand it.”
In a video in front of Ford's headquarters in Dearborn, Fain said the union met with the company on Wednesday and Ford presented the UAW "the exact same offer they gave us two weeks ago."
"In our position, they're not taking us serious. We've been very patient working with the company on this. At the end of the day, they have not met expectations. They're not even coming to the table on it. So at this point, we had to take action," Fain said.
The video posted to social media shows Fain making the phone call to the UAW local president for the Louisville facility for workers to walk out of the plant.
"We've been doing things a certain way. Every Friday, we've been doing Facebook Live updates to make announcements, so we had to choose to do things differently this way and that's what we've done this time," Fain said.
According to Ford, the Louisville facility employs 9,251 employees, 8,711 of them are hourly. The plant produces the Ford F-250–F-550 Super Duty Trucks, Ford Expedition, and Lincoln Navigator.
The company released the following statement on the strike at the truck plant:
The decision by the UAW to call a strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant is grossly irresponsible but unsurprising given the union leadership’s stated strategy of keeping the Detroit 3 wounded for months through “reputational damage” and “industrial chaos.”
Ford made an outstanding offer that would make a meaningful positive difference in the quality of life for our 57,000 UAW-represented workers, who are already among the best compensated hourly manufacturing workers anywhere in the world. In addition to our offer on pay and benefits, Ford has been bargaining in good faith this week on joint venture battery plants, which are slated to begin production in the coming years.
The UAW leadership’s decision to reject this record contract offer – which the UAW has publicly described as the best offer on the table – and strike Kentucky Truck Plant, carries serious consequences for our workforce, suppliers, dealers and commercial customers.
Kentucky Truck is Ford’s largest plant and one of the largest auto factories in America and the world. The vehicles produced at the Louisville-based factory – the F-Series Super Duty, the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator – generate $25 billion a year in revenue. In addition to affecting approximately 9,000 direct employees at the plant, this work stoppage will generate painful aftershocks – including putting at risk approximately a dozen additional Ford operations and many more supplier operations that together employ well over 100,000 people.
This decision by the UAW is all the more wrongheaded given that Ford is the only automaker to add UAW jobs since the Great Recession and assemble all of its full-size trucks in America.
The UAW also announced Fain will host a Facebook Live Friday at 10:00 a.m. "to give bargaining updates and take further action if needed."
