Ford UAW Leaders Approve Agreement; Members Must Vote

The UAW union’s top elected Ford leaders have given their approval to a tentative agreement reached last week between the automaker and the union that would deliver $10,000 signing bonuses to workers and $9 billion in new U.S. product investments, through which 8,500 jobs would be retained or created. Now it is time for the members to vote.

The new product investments include a commitment by Ford to bring its Ranger midsize pickup back to America and to revive the storied Bronco nameplate. Both vehicles would be built at a suburban Detroit assembly plant that is set to stop making the Ford Focus and C-Max families of vehicles in 2018.

Production of the Bronco is expected to start after the Ranger and no later than 2020, according to a person briefed on the agreement who was not authorized to speak publicly.

“It is one of the richest agreements in the history of UAW-Ford,” UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles said Friday in announcing the new pact.

Settles and UAW President Dennis Williams briefed several hundred Ford elected leaders Monday at the UAW-Ford National Program Center in Detroit on the details of the deal. Now that the national council has approved the agreement, it will be sent to the union’s 52,900 Ford members for ratification in a voting process that is expected to take at least a week.