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In this file photo, workers assemble Ford trucks at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant on October 27, 2017 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Timothy D. Easley/AP
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Timothy D. Easley/AP
In this file photo, workers assemble Ford trucks at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant on October 27, 2017 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Timothy D. Easley/AP
DETROIT – The United Auto Workers union is threatening to strike next week at Ford Motor Co.’s largest and most profitable factory in a dispute over local contract language.
The union said Friday that nearly 9,000 workers at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville will strike on Feb. 23 if the local contract dispute is not resolved.
If there is a strike, it would be the second time the union has walked out of the expanding factory in the last year. In October, UAW workers shut down the plant during national contract negotiations that ended with big raises for employees.
The plant, one of two Ford factories in Louisville, makes heavy-duty F-series pickup trucks and the large Ford Excursion and Lincoln Navigator SUVs, all hugely profitable vehicles for the company.
The union says workers have been without a local contract for five months. The main areas of dispute are health and safety issues, minimum nursing staff on the plant, ergonomic issues and the company’s effort to reduce the number of skilled workers.
Ford said negotiations are continuing and it hopes to reach an agreement at the plant.
The union says the strike could begin at 12:01 a.m. on February 23. It says another 19 local deals are being negotiated with Ford and several more with rivals General Motors and Stellantis.
The strike threat comes a day after Ford CEO Jim Farley told an analyst conference in New York that last fall’s controversial strike changed Ford’s relationship with the union to the point where the Automaker will “think carefully” about where it will manufacture its future vehicles.
Farley said the Louisville factory was the first truck plant the UAW closed during last year’s strike, even though Ford made a conscious decision to build all of its trucks in the U.S. Rivals General Motors and Stellantis They have truck plants in the US and Mexico.