It’s Ford time

Email to a friend Printer friendly Font: * * * * Auto production in Canada has become more expensive for Ford, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC as the Canadian dollar gained 15.6 percent against the U.S. currency this year. The manufacturers will bargain with the CAW a year after receiving wage and benefit concessions from the United Auto Workers in return for new work commitments at U.S. plants.

“We are absolutely determined to do everything we can as a union to save this plant by winning new investment and product commitments,” Hargrove said in a statement. The comments came the same day Ford said it had temporarily closed truck plants in Louisville, Ky., and Dearborn, Mich., to align output with demand. The Louisville plant, which produces the Explorer sport- utility vehicle, will be closed for a week, the company said.

The Dearborn factory, where F-150 pickup trucks are built, will remain closed next week, spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari said. Hargrove said the CAW will meet this week with Ford’s North American manufacturing chief, Joe Hinrichs, to discuss the future of the St. Thomas plant, which makes the Crown Victoria, Grand Marquis and Town Car sedans. The union will seek a commitment to build new models at St. Thomas, Hargrove said.

“There’s nothing we can do at the bargaining table if we don’t have a product” for the factory, Hargrove said in the interview. The St. Thomas plant operates on one shift. Factories with a single shift “face an uphill struggle for survival,” the union said in a statement. Hargrove said the rise of the Canadian dollar and the new U.S. labour contracts have made his union’s position more difficult. “Canada is now the high-cost producer,” he said.