8,700 UAW members at Kentucky Truck Plant join strike

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – The Kentucky Truck Plant joined the UAW’s Stand Up Strike on Wednesday, according to a Tweet from the UAW.

The UAW said KTP is joining the strike after Ford refused to make headway in a bargaining agreement.

“We’re working on post-retirement healthcare, we’re looking at retirement for us,” Local UAW 862 President Todd Dunn said. “We haven’t seen an increase in our retirement in over 15 years.”

Ford released a statement soon after the announcement saying, in part, “The decision by the UAW to call a strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant is grossly irresponsible but unsurprising.”

The statement states that Ford has made an outstanding offer that would improve the quality of life for their 57,000 UAW-represented workers.

“I don’t know where they’re getting their numbers from on what the average worker makes but the numbers they’re putting out, it’s propaganda, it’s not what we make,” a union representative at the plant Evan Littrell said in response to Ford’s statement.

Local UAW 862 leaders said there are still a number of key negotiating points the union is trying to work out with Ford.

“We want good healthcare, we want a good retirement, we want good pensions for everybody,” David Ferkins with UAW Local 862′s bargaining committee said. “We want this to be a job that everybody retires from and not just a normal everyday job.”

UAW workers picketing outside the plant Wednesday night said they’ll be striking 24/7 until the union reaches an agreement with Ford. Workers say they’re prepared to stay on the picket lines as long as it takes to get their demands met.

“We’re 52% of the North American profit right here at KTP,” Ferkins said. “We’re going to get what we want or this plant will not run. It’s time for us to fight back and it’s in the workers hands now.”

See Ford’s full statement below:

“The decision by the UAW to call a strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant is grossly irresponsible but unsurprising given the union leadership’s stated strategy of keeping the Detroit 3 wounded for months through ‘reputational damage’ and ‘industrial chaos.’

Ford made an outstanding offer that would make a meaningful positive difference in the quality of life for our 57,000 UAW-represented workers, who are already among the best compensated hourly manufacturing workers anywhere in the world. In addition to our offer on pay and benefits, Ford has been bargaining in good faith this week on joint venture battery plants, which are slated to begin production in the coming years.

The UAW leadership’s decision to reject this record contract offer – which the UAW has publicly described as the best offer on the table – and strike Kentucky Truck Plant, carries serious consequences for our workforce, suppliers, dealers and commercial customers.

Kentucky Truck is Ford’s largest plant and one of the largest auto factories in America and the world. The vehicles produced at the Louisville-based factory – the F-Series Super Duty, the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator – generate $25 billion a year in revenue. In addition to affecting approximately 9,000 direct employees at the plant, this work stoppage will generate painful aftershocks – including putting at risk approximately a dozen additional Ford operations and many more supplier operations that together employ well over 100,000 people.

This decision by the UAW is all the more wrongheaded given that Ford is the only automaker to add UAW jobs since the Great Recession and assemble all of its full-size trucks in America.”

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