The Buffalo News, March 21, 2008, Friday

The Buffalo News

March 21, 2008, Friday

The Buffalo News

Ford buyout attracts 81 local takers
Company missed national target, reports say

By Matt Glynn NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER
Updated: 03/21/08 7:10 AM

Eighty-one hourly workers at Ford Motor Co.’s stamping plant in Hamburg signed up for one of the automaker’s buyout offers, a union leader said.

Charles Gangarossa, president of United Auto Workers Local 897, said the company had expected 135 local workers to sign up. The deadline was Tuesday.

“The ones that took [the offers] this time were closer to retirement,” he said. Some younger workers also took buyouts, to pursue other goals such as going back to school, he added.

The stamping plant has just over 1,000 hourly workers. Based on the union’s figure, only about 8 percent took a buyout. Had 135 had signed up, that would have represented about 13.5 percent of the local work force.

Ford extended buyout offers of up to $140,000 to 54,000 workers represented by the United Auto Workers. The automaker will probably release its companywide total of the number of workers who signed up next week, due to the Easter holiday, said Marcey Evans, a Ford spokeswoman.

Ford has not publicly stated how many workers it had hoped would sign up. But in February, a source familiar with the situation told Bloomberg News the target was 8,000 to 9,000. That would be equivalent to roughly 15 percent to 17 percent of the 54,000 workers.

Since the deadline, some media reports, citing unidentified sources, have said Ford fell far short of that range.

Ford presented 10 different buyout offers to the UAW members. The company wants to shrink the size of its work force to match demand for its cars and trucks. It is aiming to return to profitability in 2009.

When Ford made buyout offers in 2006, about 33,600 workers signed up. The large number who signed up then might help explain why fewer are signing up this time: workers who were inclined to leave the company any time soon may have already left via the 2006 offers.

Locally, about 430 workers signed up in 2006, Gangarossa said.

Art Wheaton, director of Buffalo labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said he thinks Ford’s next move will be to offer buyouts to targeted shifts at specific plants to try to achieve its job-reduction goals. The automaker is unlikely to try another national buyout offer, he said.

Ford has previously said the average worker at the Hamburg plant is just under 50 years old, and the average number of years of service is 17 years.