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.
“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!
Oh no… anyways.
Fuck executives. Everything they touch goes to shit.
Any business that can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage shouldn’t remain in business.
Lol, fuck you pay them. If their presence is so vital then your shareholders can take a smaller cut and your pay can drop too.
WOAH! HOLD ON! Are you suggesting the share holders should be happy with less?? Who’s gonna buy the yachts?
Shareholders don’t buy yachts.
Buying a yacht would keep a boat manufacturer in business and paying wages to boat workers.
Shareholders buy shares, then take off the profits from those shares so that workers will never see them. The only way to avoid that is for the workers to own the shares, so it doesn’t matter whether the company favors the workers or favors the shareholders, because they are one and the same.
Oh yeah well that’s fine with me
Ford spent almost $500 million on stock buybacks in 2022. GM spent around $3 billion. Maybe priorities needs to be adjusted.
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.
Ford should just get rid of their C-level executive team.
So?
If you can’t pay your workers a living wage, you don’t fucking deserve to exist as a company.
Cry more, capitalist.
If they’re paying dividends to shareholders, and fatcat salaries to CEO / upper board, whilst their workers need gov topups and assistance to survive… they can get fucked.
It never fails to amaze me that there’s so much focus on ‘benefit scroungers’, whilst a majority of big businesses gain the giant benefit of cheap wages while their workers need gov assistance to get by. There are piggies with their snouts at the top, and they sit on the boards / are CEOs of big companies & multinationals.
It’s the usual backwards conservative shit, much like their stance on illegal immigration. They demonize immigrants from Central America while largely conservative businesses are the ones who hire them and give them a reason to come here. So, as DeSantis found out, they don’t actually want laws to stop it. Same with welfare, like you’re saying… they act like people on public assistance are scum somehow, and like they want to decrease it, but then companies like Walmart are setup to benefit from it by being able to pay their workers less.
Same way with culture war stuff. No business community wants a boycott. People not doing business with you is often times bad for business.
“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” - FDR
And just in case there is any confusion, here’s the next line:
By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
If he saw what modern minimum wage has become, he would be disgusted.
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Not really, they just define it the same as everything else they don’t like: decency is “woke”
Nah they define it just fine. “how can you be poor if you own a microwave?”
So you’re saying your workers are important to you?
For reference, hourly workers at Ford currently make $78K, and they rejected Ford’s proposed increase to $92K.
Also for reference, about a decade ago during the last contract negotiation, workers forgoed pay raises in order to help these struggling companies bottom line with the promise that they’d get their raises in the future all while inflation hammered away at their stagnant pay. These workers are owed that money.
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They are holding out for $110K.
and they deserve it. They sacrificed and helped the big 3 stay in business 15 years ago and that kindness was never repaid. I live in Detroit and the anger felt by the workers over this fact is not going anywhere. Time for compensation.
Good, keep it at stake.
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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
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.
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His speech read more like a threat than anything else.
Henry Ford was an asshole who inspired Hitler. I’m not sure his grandson is any better.
