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Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#2

Post by colechristensen »

That Ford CEO is stupid.

There's no "shortage" of workers. Corporations are expecting other people to train their employees past entry level and pay these people with midlevel experience like badly paid unskilled laborers.

Nobody is investing years of their time and large sums of money to get trained up for a shitty job? SURPRISE SURPRISE

If you won't take an average person with no knowledge of your industry and train them to be an expert while on the job, the problem is you, not everybody else.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#3

Post by nerdsniper »

> Ford’s signature element in its new labor agreement was to get full wages to entry-level workers. But beyond that, he began looking at the labor shortage in trade work, starting with technicians.“Old-timers in our plants were saying, ‘It’s no longer a career, Mr. Farley. Working at Ford is no longer a career.’” He warned that millions of well-paid jobs are going unfilled because they require specialized skills. Putting the salaries for these jobs at $100,000 and above, Farley argued that they require training. “You can’t work on a diesel F-150 if you haven’t been trained for five years, at a minimum five years,” Farley noted. It’s not a demand problem—there’s plenty of work—but a dire shortage of young people choosing and staying in the trades.

I looked into this a bit more, because I wanted to understand how much the Ford CEO's posited solution rested on "you can earn a living if you do a different job!" vs. "You can earn a living at any full-time job at my company".

In 2023, the new agreement Ford made with UAW:

- Increased starting wages by 68%, from $17 to $28 an hour.

- New workers reach the top pay rate in three years, a significant improvement from the previous eight-year progression.

- Top wage increased to over $40 an hour.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#5

Post by ratelimitsteve »

For this to be the CEO of Ford in particular is interesting because this is part of their founding narrative. Whether it holds up to historical scrutiny isn't something I can answer but the lore is that Henry Ford purposely paid more than market for his laborers with the idea that he'd get his pick and then those workers would then buy Fords with that money because they knew they were the best cars built by the best workers with the most experience because they stayed at Ford their whole careers.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#7

Post by techdmn »

Seems like a good time to mention my old stand-by:

There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There may very well be a shortage of qualified people willing to work under the conditions and for the compensation a company would like to provide.

When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#9

Post by bilekas »

> But beyond that, he began looking at the labor shortage in trade work, starting with technicians.

It's amazing how there can be labour shortages, yet companies still don't pay people a living wage. I thought the market was supposed to be all based around supply and demand. This just shows how out of touch these CEO's are.

They should work a year on the lowest salaried employee of their company for a while.

Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023

#10

Post by nickdothutton »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #5

For this to be the CEO of Ford in particular is interesting because this is part of their founding narrative. Whether it holds up to historical scrutiny isn't something I can answer but the lore is that Henry Ford purposely paid more than market for his laborers with the idea that he'd get his pick and then those workers would then buy Fords with that money because they knew they were the best cars built by the best…

Wasn't there some law suit from Chrysler, who tried to _stop_ him doing that? Presumably because it would give workers too much wage setting power in the market?
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