Brothers and Sisters:
As reported at last Sundays membership meeting your Local In-Plant Committee have been in constant
discussions with the company regarding the language surrounding mandatory Saturday production. It
has been the local’s position from the on-set that mandatory Saturday production was negotiated for
extra volume over and above our maximum production output. The company did not agree with our
interpretation of the language and as such we have been in a stalemate for quite some time. We
requested a meeting with the Director of Auto Dino Chiodo from the Unifor National Office. We outlined
our position and with the support of the National Union presented that position to the head of labor
Affairs at Central Headquarters. Once again we could not come to a mutual understanding. We
continued to have discussions in the plant with Plant Manager Ron Prahin outlining our position.
Voluntary canvasses have been very successful over the past couple years and this was the approach we
were demanding the company take. After much discussion and negotiation the company has agreed and
therefore the Saturday September 21st mandatory production has been cancelled and as you all know by
now a voluntary canvass took place for Sunday the 22nd. I want to be very clear Brothers and Sisters as I
reported before Ford Motor Company still believes they have the right to schedule mandatory Saturdays
at any time. Our position also has never wavered and we will NOT allow the company to work
mandatory Saturdays. We have been successful to this point negotiating voluntary days instead of
mandatory but this language will certainly need to be tightened up in 2020 bargaining.
Manpower issues are arising more and more on a daily basis and the in-plant committee has also been
in constant discussions trying to alleviate these problems throughout the different departments. We as
a local have been stressing several key points with upper management at Ford. There are hundreds of
hour of unscheduled vacation hours remaining for our members as well we have approximately 2500
members who have not taken this segment of the Unifor Workplace Training. The body shop is
consistently running under its RTO and it’s been almost impossible for members to get a personal day
off. Leaders are tied up on jobs for hours at a time. So I am happy to say the company has agreed to call
back 14 of our members that were indefinitely laid off September 2nd of this year. We know it’s a far cry
from the amount of members we need to help curb the issue but it’s a start. We will continue in
discussions with the company expressing the need to return all of our laid off members.
As always we will keep you updated moving forward
In Solidarity
Dave Thomas
President Unifor Local 707
