Ford on Wednesday said it was on pace to bring in-house approximately 1,975 hourly jobs that would be performed by suppliers inside and outside of the US by 2012 – exceeding its original commitment to the United Auto Workers union by over 25%.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The automaker said it was able to bring the UAW jobs into its US plants thanks to collaboration with the union to make its plants more competitive and efficient through modern labour agreements.
“The name of the game is competitiveness, and our UAW partners have found new ways of working together on labour agreements that allow us to bring jobs back to Ford plants and back to America,” Mark Fields, president of the Americas, told the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Michigan.
The initial commitment with the UAW called for 1,559 jobs to be “in-sourced” to hourly workers throughout the four-year term of the contract. Ford already has brought 1,340 jobs into 24 US plants and has committed to bring another 635 to nine plants in the US by 2012.
Ford and the UAW have been working together to develop a strong business case for sourcing components – including parts, sub-assemblies and systems – to the company’s American plants. Some of these jobs would have been produced by suppliers outside the US.
Ford has committed to in-source jobs to the majority of its assembly, powertrain and stamping facilities around the country.
