U.S. Auto Workers Protest Outsourcing

Filed in archive Outsourcing News on January 22, 2005

An estimated 600 members of the United Auto Workers demonstrated outside Ford Motor Company's corporate headquarters last January 21. They were against the automaker's plan to build cars in Mexico instead of the United States. The union feared that ford would shut down its Wixom, Michigan plant, and move operations to Hermosillo in Sonora, Mexico. Protesters chanted, "hey, hey, ho, ho -- we want jobs not Mexico" and "No Lincolns built in Mexico -- hell no!"

Fears were prompted by several factors. The Michigan plant's two work shifts were cutback to one in 2002. Since then, 55 percent of the plant's hourly work force has been lost. Also, the plant has been building declining Ford models, the Lincoln LS Sedan and the Ford Thunderbird. With Thunderbird's production to be phased out next year, Ford has not announced a new model to be built in the Wixom plant.

While Jim Padilla, Ford's Chief Operation Officer, said that Ford has a "big obligation" to its employees, he declined to comment on Ford's long-term production plans. Padilla said, "[The Wixom autoworkers] are going to be, for the foreseeable future, producing the product that we have there."