Auto workers Reject Contract Changes as Ford Profits Jump

It looks like Ford workers may have been onto something last week when they rejected further cutbacks to their union contract last week. For all the haggling with the union over protecting the company's competitiveness at workers' expense, Ford just rolled out a surprisingly handsome profit for the third quarter. The Detroit Free Press reports that raking in $997-million marks an upswing for the company, if not quite an unqualified success:

Ford will need several quarters of equal or better results to convince shareholders that the automaker is headed back to the heady days of the late '90s.

The dot-com bubble was making everyone feel wealthy and automakers couldn't build enough profitable SUVs.

You can't win'em all, especially when you're an autoworker stuck in a crumbling industry and an anemic job market, with a union leadership that seems almost as bent on squeezing rank-and-file as your boss is.

On the eve of the rosy profit report, the AP reported that in the Michigan, many of the 41,000 Ford workers represented by UAW had decided they'd had enough of the demands to "bring its labor costs in line with Detroit rivals Chrysler Group LLC and General Motors Co.." The proposal included a pay-freeze for lower-level workers and restrictions on the right to strike. On Monday, UAW announced the official rejection of the proposed contract changes

Although some workers voted in favor of ratification, the rift over givebacks speaks to the growing economic anxieties in the Rust Belt and a sense that UAW's leaders are too willing to serve management's interests on the backs of workers.

So UAW President Ron Gettelfinger now faces the political fallout of the rejection on top of pressure from Ford, while workers remain in limbo about the future of the company. And Rocky Comito, president of UAW Local 862 in Louisville, Kentucky, points out that executive paychecks are still stratospheric.

"Some want to see management give more at the upper level," he told the AP.

Luckily, Ford's third quarter earnings mean there's more to give at the top. Whether any of that eventually trickles down to the factory floor, however, depends on what the management and union brass would dare put on the table.