UAW strike hits Ford’s biggest factory, as 8,700 walk out in Kentucky

The United Auto Workers union widened its strike to Ford’s giant truck and SUV factory in Louisville on Wednesday evening, sending 8,700 workers off the job at a plant that makes up about one-sixth of the company’s global sales.

The UAW said it took the step because Ford “refused to make further movement” in contract bargaining. The timing was unexpected, as the UAW has been announcing its strike decisions on Fridays since it began walkouts nearly a month ago.

United Auto Workers members march through downtown Detroit on Sept. 15. Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Wednesday’s walkout brings the total number of striking UAW workers at the Big Three automakers – Ford, General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis – to about 33,700, or roughly 22% of the union’s workers at the Detroit automakers.

The Kentucky plant is Ford’s largest in the world, building the company’s profitable F-Series Super Duty trucks, as well as the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator. Its production generates annual sales of $25 billion, according to Ford.

“We have been crystal clear, and we have waited long enough, but Ford has not gotten the message,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. “It’s time for a fair contract at Ford and the rest of the Big Three. If they can’t understand that after four weeks, the 8,700 workers shutting down this extremely profitable plant will help them understand it.”

Ford in a statement called the decision “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.'”

The company called its current proposal to the union, including a 23% wage increase over four years, 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.”

A Ford official said the strike came after the UAW abruptly requested a same-day meeting on Wednesday. At the meeting at roughly 5:30 pm, Fain and other UAW officials asked their Ford negotiating counterparts whether the company had a new offer, according to the Ford official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.

Ford negotiators said the company was working to address the union’s concerns about future battery factories for electric vehicles but didn’t have a new offer to make on wages and other compensation matters. Fain then stood up and announced the Kentucky plant was going on strike, the official said.

A UAW official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ford has been saying for two weeks that it had more to add to its offer, but that the company presented the union with the same package on Wednesday.

The increasingly acrimonious strike is destabilizing an industry that makes up 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product. The ripple effects have already been severe, with suppliers to the auto factories temporarily laying off thousands of their workers.

The Big Three have also laid off several thousand non-striking UAW members whose work depends on the striking factories.

A particular sticking point in the UAW’s talks with Ford has been the battery factories the company is building with its joint-venture partner, South Korea’s SK On.

The union has been worried that the plants will offer lower wages and less job security than current factories do, and has pushed Ford to commit to including those new facilities in the overall union contract. Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, has publicly balked at committing to that, saying the factories aren’t yet built or organized by the union. The company says it is “open to the possibility of working with the UAW on future battery plants in the U.S.”