A Job-Seeking Ford Strike

This year, it was supposed to have been different. Ford Motor Co. was struck in 1967, General Motors in 1970 and Chrysler in 1973, but this time everyone in a position to prophesy had said that the triennial contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the automobile manufacturers would surely end amicably. It was not to be. Last week 170,000 Ford employees in 22 states put down their tools and walked off the lines.

Historically, the U.A.W. has declined to call industry-wide strikes, preferring instead to zero in on a so-called target company--this year, Ford. The union's logic: the target company, fearing a loss of business to the competition if it alone was struck, would do its best to meet labor's demands. Talks began in July, and Ford, as is the custom, presented a skimpy mettle-testing counteroffer to the U.A.W.'s platform. No problem so far; a walkout still seemed remote.

No Bite. Then, early this month, Ford produced a second offer that the union also deemed unpalatable. "We would sit there for hours," reports a U.A.W. negotiator, "and nothing would be happening. We even offered some concessions on minor issues, and they wouldn't bite." Ford made its final proposal the day before the strike deadline. After 90 minutes of pro forma wrangling, it was clear there would be no settlement. The next day, U.A.W. President Leonard Woodcock called a strike in time for the evening TV news. "Ford," he declared, "has been unresponsive and unwilling to engage in serious bargaining." Sidney McKenna, Ford's vice president for labor relations and its chief negotiator, insisted that the company had presented offers totaling "over $1 billion in value."

Perhaps so, except that the central issue this year was not money but time off and jobs. In order to compel the automakers to hire more workers, the union asked that employees be granted an extra day off each month. Company Chairman Henry Ford II, however, considered adequate the 33 days off a year that the average Ford worker now gets. "You can't pay people for not working and have growth in the economy," he said early this month. In its eleventh-hour offer, the company proposed an elaborate scheme whereby employees could win up to five extra days off if they compiled clean attendance records. Responded the union: Ford's plan "would not make any major progress toward creating new jobs and lowering unemployment in this country."

The parties differed on other important issues too. The union wanted cash payments to retired workers to ease the bite of recent inflation; the company offered them a dental plan. The U.A.W. asked that cost of living adjustments to wages be sweetened; Ford refused, but offered base-pay raises of up to 82-c- an hour over the new three-year contract. Said Woodcock, noting Ford's record first-half profits of $785 million: "They were obviously in a strong financial position to meet the proposals we have made."

Even a short strike would take its toll. Some industry analysts reckon that Ford could lose up to $250 million a week in revenues; lost wages add up to an estimated $50 million a week; and suppliers who sell Ford everything from tires to sandwiches also suffer. An extended strike would be particularly painful for Ford. The dealers have on hand some 300,000 of the 1976 and 1977 cars, but many of the year-old ones are models that had been selling poorly. Once the best pickings are depleted, Ford is sure to lose its market share--and the U.A.W.'s target-company strategy will be at work in textbook fashion.

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