America#;s powerful United Auto Workers union is trying to convince Ford employees to stop purchasing overseas-built cars even if sold by Ford, the Detroit News reported.

The move is reminiscent of vehicle unions#; buy-American campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s when slogans such as “Please park your import in Tokyo” were commonplace.

The Detroit News said that, from Friday evening, Ford employees driving Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover and other models made outside the United States discovered letters from the UAW on their vehicles in company car parks at the Dearborn HQ.

The newspaper said the letters were sent by the office of UAW vice-president Ron Gettelfinger, who is expected to become president in June.

According to the Detroit News, citing Ford workers who saw the fliers, the letters said Ford employees who want to support the company’s North American turnaround should be buying American-made vehicles.

The letters were also posted on Ford models such as the Focus ZX3 and ZX5 that are built in Mexico, the newspaper said.

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“The point is even though Ford owns Jaguar and Volvo, these are non-UAW assembled cars,” UAW spokeswoman Gwynne Irvin told the Detroit News.

Ford spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari told the Detroit News that the company had no comment on the issue.

The newspaper said that a massive US restructuring will see Ford closing assembly and parts plants in Edison, New Jersey, Oakville, Ontario, Saint Louis, Cleveland and Dearborn, and slashing output at 11 other plants, affecting 12,000 union workers, mostly in the United States and Canada.

The UAW has yet to comment publicly on plans by General Motors ‘product czar#; Bob Lutz to import the Australian-built Holden Monaro coupe for sale as the Pontiac GTO.

However, the union is understood to have threatened to block a 1970s proposal to import Holdens for sale as Buick models, even though the cars would have been assembled by US union labour in a US factory.