Just tell them to go live in a van down by the River Rouge, Mr. Farley.
Fun note, Jim Farley is indeed a cousin of Chris Farley.
Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
111–120 of 136 posts
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe China is the one that will find their labor compensation unsustainable?
In a world with a globalized economy it is a total abnormality that workers who are globally average are getting compensated far above the global average salary. Workers who have such demands can only exist because of very specific historical circumstances. Chinese workers are much closer to earning what you would expect the globally average worker to earn.
I wonder how US CEO compensation compares to global average CEO compensation.
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#113It is ridiculous to have American workers and Chinese workers doing essentially the same job, at the same quality, while their salaries differ enormously. American (and European) automotive companies will never be able to compete long term in any market which allows competition between Chinese and American (or European) cars. The labor of an auto worker is not worth that much and only by banning competition can Ameri…
Tariffs.
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like an economically naïve take that ignores those realities of local labor markets, relative purchasing power, and all the other reasons that underpin the theory of specialization in the first place.
Then give your theory why American workers deserve many times the wages of a Chinese worker, performing identical tasks to the same standards. >local labor markets, relative purchasing power Reverse causality. >and all the other reasons that underpin the theory of specialization in the first place. If you are specializing in something and someone else does everything you do better than you than the theory of speciali…
> Then give your theory why American workers deserve many times the wages of a Chinese worker, performing identical tasks to the same standards.
Because it costs many times as much to live in America as it does China.
> If you are specializing in something and someone else does everything you do better than you than the theory of specialization tells you that ...
Okay and my understanding was the idea behind this whole "society" thing was that we worked together for mutual benefit of one another. If whole segments of the society get left to starve and die because a different group of workers elsewhere can do their work cheaper than they can, that strikes me as... well, horrible, and also short-sighted and stupid.
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#115It is ridiculous to have American workers and Chinese workers doing essentially the same job, at the same quality, while their salaries differ enormously. American (and European) automotive companies will never be able to compete long term in any market which allows competition between Chinese and American (or European) cars. The labor of an auto worker is not worth that much and only by banning competition can Ameri…
There is a similar long term trend of people being less interested in the factory jobs in China. The government there is complaining of a factory worker shortage: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/china-wor...
And, of course, they have had factories moving to other countries like Vietnam. They're part of the same trend of factories constantly chasing after low wages.
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#116This article is wild. I love it when rich people tell you 1) they've been asleep for a decade and 2) their politics are insane. he was especially struck by stories from young factory employees. Many of them said they could not support themselves by working at Ford alone. “When I met with my entry factory workers, they were saying [they] had to have three jobs.” So, the thing people have been saying in public for 10 y…
Arsenal of democracy is something that Detroit specifically was called during WWII, so historically it isn't a wild phrase. Ford Motor Company itself built complete B-24 heavy bombers too. Edit: also an FDR quote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_of_Democracy
Yea, the guy is just old enough that he probably got exposed to those slogans when they were young.
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#117> 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. Put…
Why does it take five years' training to "work on" a diesel F-150? That's longer than most undergrad engineering degrees!
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#118> 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. Put…
It's incredible how little impact unions have on wages. For decades nobody cared about the wages, then once a non-union shop (Tesla) starts paying significantly more, the Ford CEO takes notice and double wages. One has to wonder if their wages might be higher if it weren't for the UAW, and companies had more flexibility to raise them during strong periods of growth
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#119This article is wild. I love it when rich people tell you 1) they've been asleep for a decade and 2) their politics are insane. he was especially struck by stories from young factory employees. Many of them said they could not support themselves by working at Ford alone. “When I met with my entry factory workers, they were saying [they] had to have three jobs.” So, the thing people have been saying in public for 10 y…
I think you'd be surprised at how many people absolutely, positively, do not want to sit in front of a computer all day.
But more generally, instead of complaining about why he didn't know all this already, why not celebrate that it's finally being acknowledged.
Re: Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023
#120That 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 trai…
I don't disagree, but I do think the modern culture of company hopping is contributing to this. As a leader entrusted to make good decisions for the company, you must consider this reality. At a previous company we hired a lot of junior engineers with the idea that our relatively high pay and reasonably good work would help us build a strong generation of seniors a few years down the road. What we mostly found was th…
Did anyone bother to ask why they were leaving after 1-3 years, or was it just dismissed as "that's just the culture."