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Updated: November 17, 2019

Ford workers appear set to approve labor deal

By Chris Isidore | CNN Business

Hourly workers at Ford appeared set on Friday to easily approve a tentative four-year labor deal with the automaker.

The deal reached two weeks ago has been the subject of plant-by-plant votes by rank-and-file union members around the country. Final results are due Friday evening.

So far about 62% of United Auto Workers union members who have voted on the deal have approved it. Only two factories have voted no so far — one in Chicago and one in Lima, Ohio. Support for the deal is much stronger than four years ago, when only 51% of Ford workers voted for that labor contract.

The union local that represents two large plants in Kentucky is one of the only locals yet to conclude its vote. The local has more than 12,000 members. And members of that local voted two-to-one against the contract four years ago, so a large no vote against the contract at those plants is certainly a possibility. But members would have to vote about three-to-one against the deal this time to overcome the nearly 7,000 vote margin in favor of the deal. So passage appears all but certain.

The proposed contract gives veteran workers a 6% raise over the length of the contract, as well as a $9,000 signing bonus. That signing bonus is less than the $11,000 that workers at GM got, but those workers were on strike for nearly six weeks and lost much more than the $2,000 difference in lost wages.

The deal also allows workers hired since 2007 to more quickly get to the same pay scale as veteran workers than under the previous contract. It also allows for some temporary workers to be hired on as permanent employees. Overall the union estimates that the average Ford worker will get $30,000 in additional wages and benefits over the life of the contract.

Assuming the deal passes, the union will next move to try to reach a deal with Fiat Chrysler, the third automaker whose members are represented by the UAW. Those talks have been making progress, but they have yet to be the focus of union negotiators while the talks and ratification at GM and Ford took place.

The Ford deal was reached within days of the GM strike ending, and it's possible that a tentative deal at Fiat Chrysler could also be announced in short order. But those talks could also be complicated by recent plans announced by Fiat Chrysler to merge with French automaker PSA Group, the maker of Peugeot cars.

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