Wages and Salaries

More stories

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    A Key Measure of Wages Grew at a Moderate Pace This Summer

    by

    The Employment Cost Index, which Federal Reserve officials watch closely as a gauge of pay trends, has come down since last year.A measure of pay and benefits that officials at the Federal Reserve have been watching closely as they try to gauge the heat of the labor market grew at a moderate pace over the summer.The Employment Cost Index, a quarterly measure from the Labor Department that tracks changes in wages and benefits, climbed 1.1 percent in the third quarter of 2023 versus the prior three months. That was slightly faster than the 1 percent that economists expected and up from the previous 1 percent reading.That pace of growth does mark a deceleration from a series of rapid quarterly gains in 2022. And on an annual basis, wage gains continue to slow: The employment cost measure rose by 4.3 percent on a yearly basis, down from the 4.5 percent reading in the previous report.Still, the index averaged 2.2 percent yearly gains in the decade leading up to the pandemic, underscoring that today’s pace remains unusually quick. And it is notable that wage gains continue to come in strong at a time when economists had expected them to be returning to a more normal pace. The trend could present a challenge for officials at the Federal Reserve.Rapid wage gains are good news for households, but they can spell trouble for Fed policymakers. Central bankers often worry that it will be hard to fully snuff out inflation if pay gains are climbing quickly. Companies that are paying workers higher wages are likely to try to charge more to cover their costs.Fed officials are meeting this week to discuss what to do next with interest rates, and are widely expected to hold borrowing costs steady at the conclusion of their two-day meeting on Wednesday. Economists did not expect that to change in the wake of Tuesday’s wage data.“It’s more about waiting for the labor market to continue to normalize,” said Oscar Muñoz, chief U.S. macro strategist at TD Securities. “It is taking longer, but I think that the Fed can be patient.”Fed officials have already raised interest rates to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent, up from near-zero in March 2022, in their bid to slow inflation.Those higher rates make it more expensive to borrow money to buy a house, purchase a car or expand a business. As companies hire less voraciously and demand wanes, wage growth should slow and companies should find it more difficult to raise prices without losing customers. That chain reaction is expected to put a lid on inflation.But the labor market’s cool-down has been an unexpectedly bumpy one. Job gains have slowed somewhat, but they remain much faster than many economists had expected after so much Fed action.That has left Fed officials closely watching wages.If pay growth continues to calm even as companies hire at a solid clip, it would suggest that the continued job gains are being driven by an improving supply of applicants — and that the labor market is still slowly coming back into balance.The logic is simple: If the job market were running hot, companies would be paying more and more as they tried to poach needed employees from one another. That would keep pay gains climbing swiftly. If it is cooling toward a more normal level of tightness, economists would expect wage gains to pull back.So far, policymakers have been interpreting labor market data to mean that balance is in fact returning. That’s partly because another closely watched measure of wage growth, the average hourly earnings index, has been showing steady moderation.That gauge is useful because it comes out every month, but it is also susceptible to data quirks. It tends to move around as the composition of the work force shifts. If a lot of low-wage workers gain jobs, for instance, the hourly earnings measure can drift lower.Given that, Fed officials closely monitor the Employment Cost Index, which avoids some of the data pitfalls that afflict other wage measures.“Wage growth is slowing down, but not as much as other data sources have suggested,” Cory Stahle, economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote in an analysis after the report. He added that “pay growth will likely keep slowing going forward, but the labor market continues to display notable resilience.” More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    U.A.W. Strikes Near an End After G.M. Reaches Tentative Deal

    by

    Tentative accords at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis are the most generous in decades, raising costs as the industry shifts to electric vehicles.A six-week wave of strikes that hobbled the three largest U.S. automakers has resulted in tentative contract agreements that would give workers their biggest pay raises in decades while avoiding a protracted work stoppage that could have damaged the economy.On Monday, General Motors and the United Automobile Workers reached a deal that mirrored agreements the union had reached in recent days with Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent company of Ram, Jeep and Chrysler. The terms will be costly for the automakers as they undertake a switch to electric vehicles, while setting the stage for labor strife and demands for higher pay at nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota.The tentative agreements, which still require ratification by union members, also appeared to be a win for President Biden, who had risked political capital by picketing with striking workers at a G.M. facility in Michigan last month.“They have reached a historic agreement,” Mr. Biden said Monday after speaking with Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president. The deals, the president said, “reward autoworkers who gave up much to keep the industry working and going during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.”The strike stretched longer than White House officials would have liked, but was resolved before causing significant shortages of new cars and trucks that might have frustrated voters already angry about inflation.“The near-term impact of this strike will be relatively minor,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com, an online auto sales site. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Economy

    U.A.W. Reaches Tentative Deal With Stellantis, Following Ford

    by

    The United Automobile Workers union announced the deal with Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. It also expanded its strike against G.M.The United Automobile Workers union announced on Saturday that it had reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.The agreement came three days after the union and Ford Motor announced a tentative agreement on a new contract. The two deals contain many of the same or similar terms, including a 25 percent general wage increase for U.A.W. members as well as the possibility for cost-of-living wage adjustments if inflation flares.“We have won a record-breaking contract,” the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said in a video posted on Facebook. “We truly believe we got every penny possible out of the company.”Shortly after announcing the tentative agreement with Stellantis, the union expanded its strike against General Motors, calling on workers to walk off the job at the company’s plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. The plant makes sport utility vehicles for G.M.’s Cadillac and GMC divisions.Under the tentative new contract with Stellantis, Mr. Fain said, the company has agreed to reopen a plant in Belvidere, Ill., to produce a midsize pickup truck and to rehire enough workers to staff two shifts of production.The union also won commitments to keep an engine plant in Trenton Mich., open, and to keep and expand a machining plant in Toledo, Ohio. According to the union, these moves will create up to 5,000 new U.A.W. jobs.The union also won the right to strike if the company closes any plant and if it fails to follow through on its promised investment plans, Mr. Fain said.“If the company goes back on their words on any plant, we can strike the hell out of them,” he said.Mr. Fain said Stellantis workers would now return to their jobs.In a statement, Stellantis said, “We look forward to welcoming our 43,000 employees back to work and resuming operations to serve our customers.”The tentative agreement with Stellantis will require approval by a union council that oversees negotiations with the company, and then ratification by U.A.W. members. The council will meet on Thursday, Mr. Fain said.The deal with Stellantis means that only General Motors has not yet reached an agreement with the U.A.W.Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan who follows the auto industry, said the new contracts impose higher labor costs on the Detroit manufacturers as they are ramping up production of electric vehicles and are competing with rivals who operate nonunion plants.“The Detroit Three enter a new, dangerous era,” he said. “They have to figure out how to transition to EVs and do it with a cost structure that puts them at a disadvantage with global competitors.”The union’s contracts with the three automakers expired on Sept. 15. Since then, the union has called on more than 45,000 autoworkers at the three companies to walk off the job at factories and at 38 spare-parts warehouses across the country.The most recent escalation of the strike at Stellantis came on Monday when the U.A.W. told workers to go on strike at a Ram plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., that makes the popular 1500 pickup truck. The strike has halted the production of Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators at a plant in Toledo, Ohio, and 20 Stellantis parts warehouses.For decades, the union has negotiated similar contracts with all three automakers, a method known as pattern bargaining. Like the contract it hammered out with Ford, the tentative Stellantis deal would lift the top U.A.W. wage from $32 an hour to more than $40 over four and a half years. That would allow employees working 40 hours a week to earn about $84,000 a year.Stellantis, G.M. and Ford began negotiating with the U.A.W. in July. The companies have sought to limit increases in labor costs because they already have higher labor costs than automakers like Tesla, Toyota and Honda that operate nonunion plants in the United States.The three large U.S. automakers are also trying to control costs while investing tens of billions of dollars to develop new electric vehicles, build battery plants and retool factories.Stellantis, which is based in Amsterdam, was created in 2021 by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot, the French automaker. The company’s North American business, based near Detroit, is its most profitable.Stellantis surprised analysts recently by posting much stronger profits than G.M., which is the largest U.S. automaker by sales. Stellantis earned 11 billion euros ($11.6 billion) in the first half of the year while G.M. made nearly $5 billion.Noam Scheiber More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Economy

    Ford’s U.A.W. Deal Will Raise Costs While Easing Labor Strife

    by

    A tentative agreement gives union members at the carmaker their best terms in decades but could complicate Ford’s electric vehicle plans.When autoworkers went on strike in September, executives of the large U.S. automakers warned that union demands could significantly undermine their ability to compete in a fast-changing industry. The chief executive of Ford Motor said that the company might have to scrap its investment in electric vehicles.The future doesn’t look quite that bleak now that Ford and the United Automobile Workers union have reached a tentative agreement that is likely to serve as a template for deals the union eventually reaches with General Motors and Stellantis, the maker of Ram, Jeep and Chrysler.Ford’s costs will rise under the terms of the new contract, which includes a 25 percent raise over four and a half years, improved retirement benefits and other provisions. The extra expense will weigh on profit and could hamper Ford’s ability to invest in new technology, John Lawler, the company’s chief financial officer, said Thursday.But some analysts said the increases should be manageable. What will matter more for the company’s prospects, they said, is how innovative and efficient the company is in designing and producing cars and technology that can compete with offerings from Tesla, which dominates electric vehicles, the auto industry’s fastest growing segment.“They haven’t agreed to anything that will kill their competitiveness,” said Joshua Murray, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University who is an author of a book that examined how U.S. automakers lost ground to Japanese and European rivals. He said the deal could even help Ford, in part because the four-year contract ensures there would be no labor strife during an intense phase of the transition to electric vehicles.“They won’t be engaged in labor conflict while they’re dealing with” the technology shift, Mr. Murray said.Ford said on Thursday that it earned $1.2 billion from July through September on revenue of $44 billion; the company lost $827 million in the third quarter of 2022. But the division that makes electric vehicles lost $1.3 billion because of investments in new technology and increasing competition that has pushed down prices.The roughly 17,000 Ford workers who had been on strike, out of a total of 57,000 U.A.W. employees at the company, are expected to begin returning to factories soon. At U.A.W. Local 900 in Wayne, Mich., across the street from a Ford plant that was one of the first three factories to be struck by the U.A.W., workers were disposing of signs, firewood and bottled water that had been stockpiled for picket lines.“This is the best contract I have seen in my 30 years with Ford,” said Robert Carter, who works with engineers to lay out work stations on the assembly line.Cydni Elledge for The New York Times“This is the best contract I have seen in my 30 years with Ford,” said Robert Carter, 49, who works with engineers to lay out work stations on the assembly line. He said younger workers who had been earning well below the top wage of $32 an hour would see the biggest impact with the new contract; their pay would rise to more than $40 an hour over the next four and a half years.“For some people, their pay is going to almost double,” he said. “How can you say that’s not huge?”The reaction on Wall Street suggested that investors did not regard the agreement as a catastrophe. The carmaker’s shares fell 1.7 percent during regular trading on Thursday.But Ford stock slumped almost 5 percent in after-hours trading after the company said that, because of the cost of the strike, it could no longer stand by an earlier estimate that profit before interest expenses and taxes would be $11 billion to $12 billion in 2023. Mr. Lawler also said that strike would cost the company $1.3 billion this year.Analysts at Barclays estimated the annual cost of pay raises, improved retirement benefits and other measures in the new union contract to be $1 billion to $2 billion annually by the end of the four-year contract period, or equivalent to about 1 percent of sales.Mr. Lawler said on a conference call that the contract would raise the company’s labor costs by an average of $850 to $900 per vehicle. He said Ford would try to “identify efficiencies and improve productivity to help us deliver on our targets” in light of those higher labor costs.Some analysts were critical of the deal with the U.A.W., saying the cost to Ford could put it at a significant disadvantage, perhaps prompting the company to move more production to Mexico.“It adds a constraint in a very competitive market,” said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive. “It’s definitely a compromise that, I think, down the road will either limit Ford’s performance or force them to consider alternatives.”During the contentious negotiations, Ford complained that a big raise for workers would put it even further behind Tesla in the electric vehicle market. Sales of Ford’s two main battery-powered models, the F-150 Lightning truck and the Mustang Mach-E sport-utility vehicle, have been disappointing this year, and the company recently scaled back plans to increase production of the Lightning.“There is tremendous downward pressure on E.V. pricing,” Mr. Lawler said.But Tesla and other automakers like Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan and Honda, whose factories in the United States do not have unions, may now face pressure to raise wages, eroding any cost advantage they might have had.Crystal Nush and Daniel Morales work for Ford in Chicago. Of contract negotiators, Mr. Morales said he was “trying to understand what they agreed upon.”Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe U.A.W. has declared its intention to try to organize those factories. The pay agreement with Ford, by far the biggest boost in compensation that the union has won in decades, is likely to serve as a powerful advertisement for collective bargaining.“Elon Musk better be looking at this,” said Madeline Janis, executive director of Jobs to Move America, an advocacy group that has close ties to organized labor. “Hyundai and Toyota better be looking at this. This is a new era where workers are standing up.”Tesla, the company Mr. Musk runs, and other carmakers that don’t have union workers in the United States, like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, may decide to pre-emptively hand out raises to keep labor organizers at bay.“One strategy to deter union organizing is to raise wages,” said Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University.The decisive factor in the electric vehicle market will be the ability of Ford, G.M. and Stellantis to produce innovative products, Ms. Givan and others said. That is the responsibility of management, not assembly line workers.“It’s clear that these companies have work to do in the electric vehicle market,” Ms. Givan said. “There is nothing in this contract that creates any constraints.”In addition to the 25 percent pay increase, the contract gives Ford’s hourly workers cost-of-living wage adjustments, major gains on pensions and job security, and the right to strike over plant closings. The union had initially asked for a 40 percent wage increase.Ford has not yet set dates for restarting plants idled by the strike. The company previously said it could take up to four weeks to reach full production. Ford also needs some 600 suppliers to resume production and to deliver parts.“Bringing a plant back up is much more difficult than taking it down,” Bryce Currie, vice president of Americas manufacturing at Ford, said this month.Workers at the Wayne plant, which makes the Ranger pickup and the Bronco sport-utility vehicle, had not received return-to-work orders on Thursday, but they expected to be back on the assembly line next week.Walter Robinson has worked at the Wayne plant for 34 years. Three of his children work for Ford and will see big benefits from the new terms.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesWalter Robinson, 57, has worked at the Wayne plant for 34 years and expects to retire by the end of the new contract. But he said three of his children work for Ford and would see a big benefit from the new terms.“My daughter has only been here two years, and it was going to take years for her to get the top wage,” he said. “This is going to help her immensely. This is going to make all of their lives better.” More

  • 113 Shares159 Views

    in Economy

    U.A.W. Expands Strike to a Ram Plant in Michigan

    by

    The United Automobile Workers union called on 6,800 workers to walk off the job at a large factory that makes one of Stellantis’s most profitable vehicles.In a major escalation of its six-week strike at the three large U.S. automakers, the United Automobile Workers union on Monday told 6,800 workers at a large Ram pickup truck plant in Michigan to walk off the job.Union workers at the Sterling Heights plant, which is owned by Stellantis, the parent of Ram, Chrysler and Jeep, joined the strike on Monday morning. Shutting down production at the plant, the largest Stellantis factory in the United States, suggests there are still big gaps in contract negotiations between the automakers and the U.A.W., which is seeking raises of 40 percent over four years, better retirement benefits and other changes.The union’s strategy in this strike is a departure from its past practice of striking all locations of one automaker before beginning negotiations with the next automaker. This time, the union started with a strike at one plant at each of the three carmakers — Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis — and has expanded them to other factories and warehouses to increase the pressure on companies that it said were not doing enough to improve their offers.The new approach has kept the automakers off balance because they don’t know when or where the union will walk out next. It is also a way for the union to play the companies off one another. The union’s president, Shawn Fain, has offered side-by-side comparisons of the three companies’ offers on wages, retirement benefits and other negotiating terms in online videos.On Friday, General Motors put forward a more lucrative contract proposal. By calling for the strike at the Sterling Heights plant, the U.A.W. is trying to pressure Stellantis into at least matching the terms that G.M. offered.“Stellantis has the worst proposal on the table regarding wage progression, temporary worker pay and conversion to full-time, cost-of-living adjustments, and more,” the U.A.W. said in a statement on Monday.In its offer, G.M. proposed raising workers’ wages by 23 percent over four years. That would lift the wage for all full-time workers from $32 an hour to more than $40, giving them a base pay of about $84,000 a year, not including overtime or profit-sharing bonuses.The walkout at the Ram plant is the first escalation in the strike since the U.A.W. called 8,700 workers to leave their jobs at Ford’s largest plant, in Louisville, Ky., on Oct. 11. That plant produces the Super Duty version of the popular F-series pickup trucks and the Ford Expedition, a full-size sport utility vehicle.In a statement, Stellantis said the company was “outraged” by the expansion of the strike, noting that it made a comprehensive new proposal to the union on Thursday morning and was waiting for a counterproposal from the U.A.W.“Our very strong offer would address member demands and provide immediate financial gains for our employees,” the company said. “Instead, the U.A.W. has decided to cause further harm to the entire automotive industry as well as our local, state and national economies.”U.A.W. members were already on strike at one other Stellantis plant, a factory in Toledo, Ohio, that makes the Jeep Wrangler and the Jeep Gladiator. The union has also struck 20 Stellantis spare-parts distribution warehouses around the country.Where Autoworkers Are Walking Out More

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Economy

    How High Interest Rates Sting Bakers, Farmers and Consumers

    by

    Home buyers, entrepreneurs and public officials are confronting a new reality: If they want to hold off on big purchases or investments until borrowing is less expensive, it’s probably going to be a long wait.Governments are paying more to borrow money for new schools and parks. Developers are struggling to find loans to buy lots and build homes. Companies, forced to refinance debts at sharply higher interest rates, are more likely to lay off employees — especially if they were already operating with little or no profits.Over the past few weeks, investors have realized that even with the Federal Reserve nearing an end to its increases in short-term interest rates, market-based measures of long-term borrowing costs have continued rising. In short, the economy may no longer be able to avoid a sharper slowdown.“It’s a trickle-down effect for everyone,” said Mary Kay Bates, the chief executive of Bank Midwest in Spirit Lake, Iowa.Small banks like Ms. Bates’s are at the epicenter of America’s credit crunch for small businesses. During the pandemic, with the Fed’s benchmark interest rate near zero and consumers piling up savings in bank accounts, she could make loans at 3 to 4 percent. She also put money into safe securities, like government bonds.But when the Fed’s rate started rocketing up, the value of Bank Midwest’s securities portfolio fell — meaning that if Ms. Bates sold the bonds to fund more loans, she would have to take a steep loss. Deposits were also waning, as consumers spent down their savings and moved money into higher-yielding assets.Higher Interest Rates Are Here More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    For Bill Ford, ‘Every Negotiation Is a Roller Coaster’

    by

    As a 25-year-old junior executive at the car company that bears his last name, William Clay Ford Jr. had a bracing introduction to labor negotiations when a union official demanded that he stand up and vouch that he was made of the same stuff as his great-grandfather Henry Ford.Mr. Ford, now the company’s executive chair, harked back to the moment in an interview this week about how he and his company are navigating one of their most difficult labor negotiations in decades.The United Automobile Workers union has shut down three Ford plants, including its largest, and other plants and distribution centers at General Motors and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler. The union’s new president, Shawn Fain, has said he is prepared to call workers out at more plants if his demands for big raises, better benefits and job security are not met. He has referred to the companies as “the enemy,” and has said the union is fighting “corporate greed” and standing up to the “billionaire class.”In a speech this week, Mr. Ford said the strikes were helping nonunion automakers like Tesla, Toyota and Honda. Mr. Fain responded that workers at those companies were future U.A.W. members.In an interview after his speech, Mr. Ford said he had been counseling his executives not to let Mr. Fain’s words get to them and focus on getting a deal done. Mr. Ford also recalled his first difficult conversation with a union official.In 1982, Mr. Ford said, his father invited him to sit in the room for talks with the U.A.W. As a newcomer, he was not allotted a seat at a table where about 50 union negotiators sat on one side and an equal number of Ford executives on the other.Sitting against the wall, he was approached by an older union representative. “You, stand up,” the man said. “What are you made of? I knew your great-grandfather and your grandfather. I knew what they were made of. What the hell are you made of?”Mr. Ford said he had replied sheepishly that he had never known his great-grandfather and grandfather but that he shared their values. Similar confrontations followed daily — “I lived in terror of going to work,” Mr. Ford said.Then about a week later, the union officials invited him to a local bar. “Come with us,” Mr. Ford said they had told him. “You passed the test.”This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.Have you been involved in any talks that are comparable to the current negotiations?No, but every negotiation is different, and every leader is different. What I keep saying to our executives is: ‘Don’t take this personally. A lot of it is theater. The most important thing is get the deal done. The rhetoric doesn’t matter.’ Every negotiation is a roller coaster. Some are not pleasant, and some sting. Don’t overreact. And when it’s all over, we are still one team again, and have to go forward.Are you going to be on the same team at the end of these talks?I believe we will. I know many on their negotiating team personally, and some of them, I play hockey with them and consider them very close friends.You’ve said the real competition is not U.A.W. vs. Ford but the U.A.W. and Ford against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the Chinese automakers. Do you think the union’s leadership agrees with that?I hope so, because if they don’t, it will be catastrophic. They can have disagreements with us and bargain hard, but we are not the enemy. I will never consider our employees the enemy. I think the employees know who the real competition is, and they will come together with us when this is over. We made a conscious decision to add jobs here in America when our competitors were moving production to Mexico.Would the offer you have on the table now put Ford at a significant disadvantage to other automakers?It certainly won’t be an advantage. We could live with the deal we have proposed, but just barely. If you go beyond that, we are going to have to start making hard decisions in terms of investments and future products.Shawn Fain has said the workers have fallen behind while the automakers and executives like Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, and Mary Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, have prospered. How do you respond?Everyone’s going to have their own viewpoint on executive compensation, and I totally get that. But I also know what the market is for top talent. You have entertainers and athletes who are making more than Jim Farley and Mary Barra. But that’s what the market is, and the company with the best talent wins, period.There were some years in the lean years when I took no pay, and I would do it again if I had to.You have three plants shut down by the strike. How is that affecting your operations?It’s messy, and it’s going to become messier. The most immediate effects will be on the suppliers. The supply base is very fragile. It barely survived Covid, and is not all the way back, so a prolonged strike will start collapsing the supply base, and then making anything in this country will be difficult.Manufacturing is a matter of national security, and we saw that during Covid. And I hope with all my heart we never get into another war, but if we did, this industry would be critical to defending our nation, as it was in World War I and World War II. Other industries can make small numbers of things. The auto companies can turn that into tens of thousands of things.“I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.” — William Clay Ford Jr.What’s your outlook on the U.S. economy?I think it’s fragile. Inflation is taking its toll. The consumer is still spending, but we’re watching it very carefully. On the other hand, there’s still strong employment, and we are seeing our sales hold up. There are conflicting signals, for sure.Let’s talk about electric vehicles. About 18 months ago, you launched the F-150 Lightning pickup. It seemed like electric vehicle sales were going to take off. But now Ford is slowing production of that truck. What happened?E.V. sales are still up 50 percent this year, so sales are growing very fast. But we’ve also seen a politicization of E.V.s. Blue states say E.V.s are great and we need to adopt them as soon as possible for climate reasons. Some of the red states say this is just like the vaccine, and it’s being shoved down our throat by the government, and we don’t want it. I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.The other is prices. Electric vehicles are expensive. We know prices will come down, and as that happens, we will have a bigger ramp-up of E.V.s. Keep this in mind: The most valuable company that our industry has ever seen is Tesla, and it’s growing. That’s a very instructive point when people say E.V.s are not desired.Are you concerned about some of Donald Trump’s comments? He just came into Michigan and said that the transition to electric vehicles is going to result in almost all auto production moving to China.I don’t want to personalize this, because, frankly, we have to pick a path forward and our lead times are longer than political lead times. So we can’t overreact to one bit of rhetoric or another. We have to deal with the most likely scenario, and how we can create the most value for our company, so we are pushing ahead with E.V.s because we do believe they have great application for a lot of people. And once people drive E.V.s, they will see that it’s a great experience.Electric vehicles are expensive. Did Tesla’s price cuts have a big effect on your business?That’s what we have seen with every new technology that has been adapted. You come down the cost curve pretty quickly as batteries get better.With our first-generation E.V.s, the Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E, they were done with a lot of internal combustion engineering in them. The next generation, which will start coming quite quickly, was developed with a clean sheet of paper. When you do that you can really start taking cost out, and then you can start pricing them accordingly.Tesla has been leading the price cuts, because they can with their scale. That’s something we are actually counting on in the future. And we will have products that compete and make money in that world. More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Economy

    Bill Ford Says U.A.W. Strike Is Helping Tesla and Toyota

    by

    Mr. Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor, said nonunion automakers would make gains against Michigan automakers because of strikes by the United Automobile Workers union.The monthlong strike by the United Automobile Workers and the union’s demands for substantial pay and benefits increases risk damaging the U.S. auto industry, hurting its ability to compete against nonunion foreign rivals, the executive chairman of Ford Motor said on Monday.The fight should not be seen as the U.A.W. against Ford, or its crosstown rivals, General Motors and Stellantis, said William C. Ford Jr., the great-grandson of the company’s founder Henry Ford, noting that at times U.A.W. officials have referred to the automakers as the union’s “enemy.”“It should be Ford and the U.A.W. against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and all the Chinese companies that want to enter our home market,” Mr. Ford said at the company’s Rouge plant in Dearborn, Mich.“Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the others are loving the strike, because they know the longer it goes on, the better it is for them,” the executive chairman said. “They will win, and all of us will lose.”Mr. Ford’s remarks alluded to a period several decades ago when the U.A.W. won increasingly rich contracts that were later seen by many industry experts as having hobbled the three Michigan automakers in the face of competition from Japanese and European carmakers. Ford came to the brink of collapse, and G.M. and Chrysler — now part of Stellantis — had to seek bankruptcy protection after the 2008 financial crisis.“Ford’s ability to invest in the future isn’t just a talking point,” Mr. Ford said. “It is the absolute lifeblood of our company. And if we lose it, we will lose to the competition. Many jobs will be lost.”In a statement, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said Mr. Ford should “stop playing games” and meet the union’s demands, or “we’ll close the Rouge for him.” Mr. Fain added that the U.A.W. was not fighting the company but “corporate greed.”“If Ford wants to be the all-American auto company, they can pay all-American wages and benefits,” Mr. Fain said. “Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda and others are not the enemy — they’re the U.A.W. members of the future.”Ford, G.M. and Stellantis have been negotiating new labor contracts with the U.A.W. since July. Over the past month, the union has called on workers at a few plants to go on strike. The action has idled three Ford plants, two G.M. factories and one Stellantis plant. Workers at 38 G.M. and Stellantis spare-parts warehouses are also on strike.The strategy is intended to increase pressure on the companies to meet the union’s demands for significantly higher wages, shorter working hours and expanded pensions, and to end a system that pays new hires just over half of the top U.A.W. wage of $32 an hour.The companies have offered wage increases of more than 20 percent over the next four years and certain other measures in line with the union’s demands, but the U.A.W. is pressing for greater concessions.Last week, the union called for a strike by 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant in Louisville, the company’s largest.Ford executives said last week that the company had made a record offer to the union and that sweetening the deal would hurt the automaker’s ability to invest in electric vehicles and other new models and technologies.Mr. Ford, who has had a role in every round of negotiations with the U.A.W. since 1982, said the talks had reached “a crossroads” and warned that labor contracts that burdened the automakers with heavy costs could affect the U.S. economy.“The price of failure should be clear to everyone,” he said. “Let’s come together and reach an agreement, so we can take the fight to the real competition.” More