LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Union workers with the Kentucky Ford Truck Plant have reached a tentative local agreement with the company, halting a looming Feb. 23 strike deadline.
UAW Local 862 president Todd Dunn told Spectrum News 1, he is feeling “good” about the tentative deal.
Dunn added, “Knowing we got a, you know, a world class agreement in our national contract and knowing that we’re going to have this good of a contract for a local agreement really makes me feel confident and proud that we as a team are leaving it better than we found it,”
The United Auto Workers announced on Friday, Feb. 16, nearly 9,000 union employees at the Kentucky Ford Truck Plant would strike if a local agreement could not be reached. UAW said the Ford Motor Company failed to reach a local agreement with the UAW Local 862, the union that represents workers at the Louisville-based truck plant, over fine months past the contract deadline.
The agreement addresses issues related to skilled trades, health and safety and ergonomics. Details of the contract were not discussed so members could hear it first from the UAW.
“We really got to get the membership to approve what we’ve done because the membership is the highest authority. Once we get that done, then we can explain to them. So with respect to everyone, we want to come to our members first because we put a heads of protection around them,” said Dunn.
Dunn said while they were prepared to strike, he was confident a deal would be made before the Friday deadline.
“So none of our membership was alarmed. You didn’t see me going to the mayor or going to the governor saying, look, I’m telling my people, prepare, you know, there could be some issues. We might need some help with unemployment. None of that ever happened. That’s how confident we were that we could close the agreement up,” Dunn said.
The plant, one of two Ford factories in Louisville, makes heavy-duty F-Series pickup trucks and the Ford Excursion and Lincoln Navigator large SUVs, all hugely profitable vehicles for the company.
A strike at the sprawling plant would have been the second in the past year. In October, UAW workers shut down the plant during national contract negotiations that ended with large raises for employees.
Today Ford told Spectrum News 1 in a statement it is “pleased to have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with UAW Local 862 covering Kentucky truck plant and 8,700 valued UAW Ford employees…”
The UAW union ratified a new contract with Ford on Nov. 18, 2023 similar to union deals struck with General Motors and Stellantis. Union workers at the Kentucky Ford Truck Plant, where the highly profitable heavy-duty F-series pickup trucks are manufactured, walked off the job on Oct. 11, 2023.
The UAW says there are 19 other local agreements being negotiated with Ford, and several more at rivals General Motors and Stellantis.
Union leadership sad highlights of the agreement will be distributed early next week on paper, but members can get real-time updates on the UAW 862 app.
“Whoever has got the app, we’ve asked everybody, get on the app and a lot of them did during the strike. They get up-to-date information immediately. So we’ll be putting that out today consistent with our past practices,” Dunn said.
Dunn is asking members to be patient because he said it’s a “beast” getting information out to all members.
Right now, there is a tentative contract vote is scheduled for Wednesday through Friday next week. The vote will be held at the Kentucky Truck Plant Union Hall.
The strike threat last week came after Ford CEO Jim Farley told an analysts’ conference in New York that last fall’s contentious UAW strike changed Ford’s relationship with the union to the point where the automaker will “think carefully” about where it builds future vehicles.