Ford Louisville plant still stalled
Union reps say total stop to fix software issue is ‘somewhat of a different approach’
The Ford Louisville Assembly Plant has entered its third week of stalled production as the car manufacturer addresses “quality control issues,” keeping roughly 3,200 hourly employees off the assembly line.
Last week, the plant, which produces the Ford Escape and the Lincoln Corsair, was temporarily shut down due to a software issue with the vehicles. The issue was detected during quality control measures, which Ford has put in place in an effort to discover problems prior to sale.
“When the plant is down, you’ve affected the vast majority of the people there,” Kelli Felker, a spokesperson at Ford told The Courier Journal.
Maria Buczkowski, a quality control spokesperson at Ford, told The Courier Journal the current work cease at Louisville Assembly Plant, where production and skilled trade workers are not working while Ford addresses the software issue, is “really normal routine.”
Union representatives, however, said a total production stop to try to immediately resolve potential issues with vehicles, is new.
“This is somewhat of a different approach,” said Todd Dunn, president of UAW Local 862, which represents rank-and-file union workers at Ford’s two Louisville-based plants. “We were somewhat surprised over prior launch stoppages that have been spread out.”
As of Monday, Felker told The Courier Journal there is not yet a Labor Relations Bulletin with a return-to-work date for Louisville Assembly Plant workers who have been impacted by the production halt. Here’s what else to know about the temporary work cease and what it means for Ford:
What does the Louisville Assembly Plant shutdown mean for workers?
Buczkowski told The Courier Journal the 2023-model Escape currently being built at the plant is in “pre-build,” meaning the company is in its early building stages.
“You build the vehicle, you understand that
there are issues, and you continue doing that until … you start producing them for customers,” she said.
Vehicles currently produced at the plant are not intended for sale to customers and are instead vehicles for employees.
“The majority of the vehicles that have been built are Ford employees’ vehicles. No vehicles will be shipped until they’ve been put through a rigorous quality inspection,” Felker told The Courier Journal.
Dunn noted the full shutdown is different then past approaches, where Ford employees would “build product and fix (it) in the yard and various locations around Louisville.”
“We were surprised that Ford would take this approach however it is an approach that can work,” Dunn told The Courier Journal.
The importance of quality products has recently been stressed by Ford. In June 2022, Ford recalled 2.9 million vehicles, including roughly 1.7 million 2013-2019 Escape models, due to an issue with the vehicle being unable to shift into the correct gear, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Ford CEO Jim Farley revealed that warranty costs related to vehicle recalls reached $5 billion in 2019 and vehicle launch problems have cost the company roughly $1 billion, according to reporting from the Detroit Free Press.
Will Louisville Assembly Plant continue to get paid during the shutdown?
According to a Labor Relations Bulletin shared with The Courier Journal on Feb. 15, Ford will apply for unemployment on behalf of its employees.
Felker noted hourly employees who have at least one year of seniority will receive about 75% of their gross pay through unemployment and supplemental unemployment benefits during the temporary shutdown. Ford did not provide The Courier Journal with information on how much longer employees can expect the shutdown to last.
“While this downtime concerns us for our union members and employees at Ford Motor Company and the economic (impact) that it creates, we are thankful for the contractual benefits that are in place for our union members to offset that outcome,” Dunn told The Courier Journal.
What Ford means by ‘quality control’
Any issue a customer may experience with a Ford product would be a quality control issue, such as software problems and mechanical failures.
“If we are catching quality issues before they leave the door, that means our teams are doing their job and following processes, so we prevent issues from reaching our customers,” Buczkowski told The Courier Journal.
Ford has three components of quality control: preventing — which is what is happening at the Louisville plant — detecting and resolving, which is done once the product has already reached the customers, Buczkowski told The Courier Journal.
Under Ford’s preventing aspect of quality control, employees look to improve engineering, workflow and other aspects of manufacturing.
Other aspects of quality issue prevention include elevating supplier quality standards and fixing software bugs. Last week it was confirmed that the Louisville Assembly Plant quality issue detected was a software issue.
The detecting and resolving phases of Ford’s quality control initiatives focus on addressing vehicle issues after launch and once they are sold to customers. Much of this work is done through vehicle analytics and diagnostics, Buczkowski told The Courier Journal.
What’s next for Ford?
Earlier this month, Ford halted production of its F-150 Lightning at its Dearborn, Michigan, plant due to a battery issue. Ford said that plant production halt and the production halt of the Louisville Assembly Plant are unrelated.
The UAW will go to the bargaining table with Ford later this year to negotiate a new union contract. The last union contract was ratified in 2019.
“We also learn from these new ways to approach initiatives by Ford Motor Company as to find new solutions that we focus to deliver in upcoming negotiations through proposals from leadership and concerns from the plant floors across our country,” Dunn told The Courier Journal.