While the United Auto Workers (UAW) union hasn’t expanded its strike against Ford since it walked out of the Kentucky Truck Plant roughly two weeks ago, it did exit one facility operated by Stellantis and General Motors this week. Regardless, the strike at the Kentucky Truck Plant is impacting a grand total of 13 other Blue Oval facilities, including the Louisville Assembly plant, which builds the Ford Escape, Lincoln Corsair – prompting a number of layoffs. However, salaried Ford workers at the Kentucky plant continue to operate the stamping side of the operation, which is keeping Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair production humming along in Louisville, meaning that The Blue Oval doesn’t plan to lay off any workers there for now, according to WHAS 11 News.
“I hope we’re nearing the end; it sounds like we’re really close,” Louisville UAW chapter president Todd Dunn said of a potential agreement between FoMoCo and the UAW. Dunn noted that Ford has “come back to the table” and added that negotiations are heading in the right direction, but he also added that it seems as if it’s unlikely there will be any layoffs at the Louisville plant at the moment, too.
“Right now, they’re holding steady,” he said. “They’ve been able to manage to keep up,” Dunn noted of the salaried workers manning the stamping plant side of the Kentucky plant, which means that those parts continue to flow to Louisville. “I’m very optimistic we can get a tentative agreement, and hopefully we can do that as soon as this week,” he added. This is notable because just last week, Dunn said that a disruption in production at Louisville seemed like a very real possibility.
In addition to stamping parts for the Louisville plant, the Kentucky facility also makes components for the Ohio Assembly plant, which builds the Ford E-Series, Ford Super Duty and Ford F-650 and F-750 models.
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Comments
I’m glad the Escape has returned to America’s good graces (now, don’t cancel it, Ford), but TBH, salaried workers doing stamping work doesn’t bode well for the quality ratings of it.
Most likely the QUALITY will improve with the salaried folk running the presses.
Press work is not complex, boring…yes.
Then again, Fords quality has been in the shetter for many years, even a 10% increase will not do much.
Stamping and throwing blanks are not only dangerous but pumping out good parts off the end of the line and catching defects takes mental fortitude. I have worked in 2 different stamping plants and they only gage and inspect parts 3 times a shift. At the start of the shift, middle and end of the shift so if you have an operator not loading parts into the draw die wrong and someone that doesn’t know what they are looking for on the end of the press line in between those checks that the inspector does your going to get a lot of defective parts that never get caught that could cause a bad situation for the company
There is an issue with deflectors being left off Corsairs with the towing package. This is allowing a wire to lay on the muffler on the passenger side and melt. Per the Lincoln forum this has been going on since the 2022 models. Probably forgot to reinstall them after installing the tow package. Check any and all Corsairs by looking at the passenger side muffler area.