ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170093
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DETROIT
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
The United Auto Workers union and Ford Motor Co., apparently for the first time ever, have agreed that some union production workers will receive lower pay than others in some of the company's plants, a union official said.
The lower pay will be for newly hired workers in parts factories.
Strict guidelines will be developed to make sure these new jobs aren't simply siphoned away from existing UAW jobs or don't siphon away investments from UAW factories worried about their future.
The terms are part of a tentative agreement reached Monday on a new national contract for Ford's 105,025 union workers.
Full terms of the agreement were not immediately announced. The ratification vote should be held by Sept. 29, said Ernie Lofton, a vice president in charge of UAW's Ford department.
The union's executive committee is scheduled to meet today, and the union's Ford department, which would involve several hundred people, is scheduled to meet Wednesday.
Workers in the newly created jobs mentioned in the contract would receive ``the prevailing wage'' in the parts-making industry, as determined by the top 25 percent of comparable employers.
UAW workers in Ford's parts factories now make $19 an hour. Ford has said for years that parts jobs with this kind of wage are hard to create. The UAW has been adamant in resisting such proposals to prevent severe pressure on its overall wage scale.
Ford thinks the new approach will allow it to create 10,000 jobs in the next three years that would not be possible otherwise.
These new jobs will count against the guaranteed employment levels that are another major feature of the new contract.
The lower wage scale in parts plants apparently represents the most innovative feature in the new contract.
Wages, the last remaining issue in the contract talks, have been settled, but no details were available Monday. The union has been pressing annual base wage increases of 2 percent to 3 percent, but the company has been resisting because the tradition of annual pay increases was abandoned 14 years ago.
The new contract would last three years. In contrast to many news reports, it will not increase the time newly hired workers in existing Ford plants have to wait before receiving the same pay as long-time workers.
Currently, newly hired workers in existing Ford plants start at 70 percent of the pay of long-time workers and take three years to catch up.
The contract, in addition, will require Ford to maintain 95 percent of the 105,000 UAW jobs it has now, barring a catastrophic sales downturn.
The UAW will now switch its focus to talks with either Chrysler Corp. or General Motors Corp. The union has been holding lower-level talks with the two automakers since it designated Ford the lead company earlier this month.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Ford Motor Co. Chairman Alex Trotman attends anby CNBEconomic Club of Detroit luncheon at Cobo Center on Monday. A
tentative agreement was reached on a new national contract for
Ford's 105,025 union workers.